


Bonds

by TheDoctorMulder



Series: Breaking Point [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Multi, OT3, Psychic Bond, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:12:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorMulder/pseuds/TheDoctorMulder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and the part human Doctor work on setting a stronger bond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crespallion

**Author's Note:**

> 4th in the Breaking Point series
> 
> Timeline: Takes place a few days after the end of She Doesn't Need Me, and Entry 3 of The Secret Diary of Rose Tyler
> 
> Warning: language, smuttiness, nsfw (first chapter clean)

Rose and the blue-suited Doctor burst through the door of the TARDIS, laughing. The part human then turned to their pursuers and shouted, “And that goes for your dad too!”

One of the three blue skinned people picked up a rock and threw it at them, just missing Rose. He ducked and shut the doors before they could throw something else at them. When he turned around and saw Rose and his twin, he burst out laughing again. The Time Lord just shook his head and sent them into the vortex. But he could tell that his counterpart with two hearts was smiling.

“That was all your fault!” Rose accused the Doctor in the black trench coat, still laughing.

“Oi! I didn't see you complaining!” he reminded her, then pushed her back against the doors of the TARDIS.

XxXxXxXx  
_Earlier_

Rose Tyler stepped out of the TARDIS wearing a purple tank top, a teal jacket, and the skirt she had gotten on Trilaxia Three, which faded from teal at the top to purple at the bottom. Her jacket had trans-dimensional pockets. All of her jackets did now, and she wondered how she got by without them before.

The place they had landed looked like any city when you get away from the touristy areas and the downtown parts where the city was trying to impress people. Just a place where people lived and worked every day. The homes were all black brick, narrow, and tall. They were pushed up against each other where you couldn't tell where one ended and another began from the street unless you paid attention to the brick pattern. 

It would have seemed depressing if it weren't for the personal touches to each home and the little patches of ground in front of them, each about a meter deep. Each tiny yard was fenced in for the most part so that people couldn't accidentally destroy the little plots of color. What would be green on Earth was teal. Purples and reds seemed to dominate the other colors. 

She heard the door of the TARDIS shut behind her and turned around to look back at the Doctors. “Go, on, then. Exactly where and when are we?” she prodded before looking back at the sight before her. The people niggled at her. She'd seen them before, she was sure of it. Very, very dark blue skin.

“This is the year five point four slash, orange, slash ninety-one, about eight thousand years before the end of planet Earth,” one Doctor said.

“As for where,” the other Doctor added, we're on the Crespallion planetoid, which is-”

“Part of the Jaggit Brocade, affiliated to the Scarlet Junction, Convex fifty six,” Rose finished, the memory of where she had seen these people before jogged. Particularly Raffalo the plumber. She wondered what happened to her. She seemed sweet. 

She turned around and looked at the Doctors, who stared at her in shock.

“How do-?”

“What?”

“Close your mouths, boys, you'll catch flies, or whatever similar insect they have here,” she told them, amused. “It's not anything special. Don' even know what that means. I talked to one of the people on Platform One. Raffalo was her name, she was a plumber. Dunno why I remembered that bit, exactly, but that's what she said.”

The Time Lord recovered first. “That'll all be true in about four thousand years,” he lectured. “We're back about eight thousand years before the end of Earth Prime.”

“Our first date,” the other Doctor reminisced fondly.

“We had chips,” Rose replied automatically. The three of them gave each other soft smiles for a moment.

“Okay,” the Doctor in brown spoke, suddenly all business. One of these days, his sudden mood changes wouldn't give her mental whiplash. Today was not that day. “Weelll, we have a massive list of TARDIS parts we need to get, well, I haven't actually gotten TARDIS parts since...anyway get parts that we can jiggery pokery into TARDIS parts. This is the place where we're likely be able to get the most stuff we'll need soon.”

He put his hands in his pockets and grinned. Another mood change. “We get through this list quickly, and I've got somewhere special I want to take you, which is why I said to dress in a long skirt.” 

“Which looks amazing on you,” the part human Doctor put in. His eyes roamed up her body slowly. Then he winked and pulled a quick mood change of his own. “Can I see that list?”

Rose pulled out the long lists that she and the full Gallifreyan had compiled the night before while the part human Doctor was asleep. It was broken up into components, whole pieces that could be taken down into a lot of different needed components, and whole parts that could be used as is or mostly as is. She handed the list to the Doctor who asked for it, and he pulled his glasses out to look the contents over.

After a fairly quick debate on which one would get which parts, and who Rose was going with, (which ended in Rose's declaration that there was no real danger here worse than what she had lived with as a little kid mostly on her own. She was going to take the simple components that were going to be purchased new and go off on her own so they could get out of there faster. That discussion was settled, thank you) they finally separated, with promises to check in with each other ever so often through their bonds.

She went through the streets of Crespallion, following her directions and looking for the first shop that would have the things on her list. She was tasked with finding materials, wires, and some of the other components and given directions on where to go to get them. 

Crespallion was a tinkerer's heaven. Rose had done some tinkering in her time, but there was always a very specific purpose when she was putting together components. It wasn't like the Doctors, who both always had some project, or some idea they were working on. 

It didn't take long to find what she was looking for. The first shop had most of the computer type bits she needed, the second had most of the wires and hoses she needed, the third had most of the components and wires that she was missing, and the fourth had everything else she needed, except for one type of capacitor. 

A quick query sent her to a place where she could get her last component. She reached out to open the door of the little junk shop, and it flung open, barely missing her hand. 

The part human Doctor stepped out of the shop, grinning and waving bye to someone inside. He turned around just in time to stop himself from running into Rose. 

“Rose! What are you doing here?” he asked, surprised. “Are you getting everything okay?” He rolled up the small bag of gadgets from the shop so that it could fit through the opening of his jacket pocket, and turned his full attention to her.

“Almost,” Rose replied. “Still missing one of these.” She pointed to the one item on her list that didn't have a little check mark next to it. 

The Doctor looked at the list to see what was missing and noticed the check marks down the whole page. He looked over at Rose with raised eyebrows. “You got all of this already?”

“Yeah, it wasn't exactly hard,” Rose told him. 

“No, not hard,” the Doctor agreed, “but it would have taken me a lot longer to get everything.”

“That's because you woulda dug for everything yourself, and come across a bunch of other things you decided you needed too,” Rose teased.

“Welll, yeah,” he admitted with a toothy grin. “How did you manage to get others to help?” he couldn't help but ask.

“I used to be a shop girl, I know 'ow to get the people who work in a shop to 'elp with things.” She shrugged. “I was a model customer, came in knowing exactly what I wanted, didn't command, and was in and out quickly.” 

“You're brilliant,” he gave her a quick peck, then grabbed her hand and led her away from the shop.

“I still 'ave to get a-” Rose started, pointing back to the shop.

“Nah,” he cut her sentence off. “Like you said, I always pick up extra stuff, and I got two of 'em. Can never have too many, you know. Well, I say you can't have too many, but if you were to have a whole room of 'em, that would be more than you could probably ever need.” 

“Oh, okay then,” Rose brightly replied. “Saves me from 'aving to go in there and grab it.”

“That's the spirit.” They crossed the road over to the other side, smiling and swinging their hands between them. 

After a few moments, Rose asked, “So where are we headed to now?”

“Oh, I just have one more stop to make. Won't take but a tick, then, I have something I want to show you.”

Oh how she loved those words. 'Something I want to show you' was always followed up by a real treat, whether it was something as simple as a particularly cute furry animal or trying some bananaish flavored confection from some unpronounceable-to her anyway-planet in the 8th century, or something as spectacular as a mostly barren planet with flying stingray type creatures or giant frozen ice waves. 

“Ooohh, what?” she asked, knowing that he wouldn't tell her.

“Just wait and see,” he replied back with a smug grin. She wanted to wipe that smug grin off of his face, but the way she wanted to wipe it off would probably only make it bigger.

XxXxXxXx  
The Doctor picked up the solid tungsten-chromium alloy anti-backlash differential from that little shop that sold all those wonderful new mechanical parts. 

The TARDIS could have made it, of course. Technically, she could make it so that none of them ever had to step outside of her shell ever again, so long as she had energy and the elements. She was a world in herself. However, she was old, and even if she weren't old, he wasn't going to make her make every little thing he needed. Why? Especially when it was already made? He loved digging around for parts. A person such as himself could get a million ideas from a pile of parts, but much less if he had to come up with ideas 100% from scratch with no visual aids.

When they walked out of the shop, he took Rose's hand and started pulling her to this little place he found. She was going to love it. 

“So, I found this place earlier,” the Doctor told Rose, “and I wanted you to see it.”

“You found a place you didn't know about before?” she queried. “Did you make a wrong turn?” She gave him that smile with that little pink tongue sticking out. He'd give her something to do with that tongue. Oh yes. If he had his way that tongue would be busy in a few minutes. 

“I don't make wrong turns, I went exploring,” he said in mock exasperation.

“Sure,” she teased, then giggled. She didn't believe him. Not that he tried to make her believe him. 

“Okay, then, I won't take you to see this wonderfully brilliant, amazingly astonishing, marvelously impressive, fantastically-”

She was laughing enough that the people around, who were mostly the local dark blue skinned people, were looking at them funny. Not that he minded, he was used to looking like he was a nutter. 

“What's so funny?” he asked, completely clueless as to where she was finding her mirth at.

“You sound like you're reading from a thesaurus.” Oh, for Rassilon's sake, there was that tongue again. It was even more distracting now, after- best not think about that right at this moment, not quite yet.

“The cheek on you, Rose Tyler, If I was reading from a thesaurus, it would have sounded totally different,” he haughtily said. 

She shook her head and changed the subject. “So, how much farther?”

“Not far, oh impatient one,” he chided and wagged a finger at her in admonishment.

“Look who's talking!” she exclaimed.

“Oi! This me is far more patient than some people we know,” he declared.

She just looked at him with amusement.

“More patient?” Nothing. “Somewhat more patient?”

She broke out in a grin. “Okay, I'll give you that one.”

They reached the street where his surprise was and turned onto it, speeding up as they neared their destination. The Doctor pulled Rose down an alleyway that looked like it dead ended from the residential street. Except once you got most of the way down the alley, you could see where it turned off at the end. Just before they got to the turn, the Doctor looked back at the street and made sure that there was no one watching them. 

They were in a narrow little space between two buildings on two different streets, walking behind them both. There were no windows, and only doorways that looked like they hadn't been opened in years. The space was so narrow and the walls so high, that there wasn't much in the way of trash there, just some left from the kids who obviously would hang out here sometimes to hide. 

“So, I was walking,” the Doctor stated in the same manner he gave his lectures on the history of a place they landed, “and found myself on that little street back there and found this little alleyway. I like to explore, so-”

“You thought it was a good idea to walk down an unknown alley?” she interrupted, incredulously. She stopped and put her hands on her hips, and he had the sudden urge to back away before she got any angrier.

“It's daytime.”

“It's an alley,” she pointed out. “One that's dark enough to be night. If it were night, then you wouldn't be able to see at all without a torch.” She looked agitated. “How the hell did you ever survive this long?”

“I _can_ take care of myself, Rose,” he asserted, annoyed at her insinuation.

“Look, Doctor, where I'm from, dark alleys can be very, very dangerous, and from what I've seen, people are basically the same no matter the species, time, or universe. And you don't have a get-out-of-death-free-by-regeneration card anymore.” She stepped closer to him and put one hand on his chest over his lone heart, and the other on his shoulder. “I worry about you.” The hand on his chest started rubbing up and down. “Dammit, Doctor, I want you to get gray on me.” The hand on his chest gave him a little slap, and he grabbed it and held it where it was. “Promise me you'll be a little more careful, you idiot.”

Her voice broke on the last word. He wrapped his free arm around her waist and pulled her in. The Doctor then leaned down and captured her lips with his own, their kiss was quick and passionate, and he broke away before things could get too heated. They were still in the narrow alley, and they hadn't made it to what he wanted to show her yet. 

“I'm sorry, Rose. I'm so sorry I worried you. I promise to try to remember to be more careful now,” he whispered in her ear. When he pulled back, he could see that her eyes were watery, and he vowed to put a smile on her face. “Come on you, I still want to show you this.” He took her hand and pulled her toward the door he was looking for. 

“Alright then, Time Lord, let's see what you think is so impressive,”


	2. Brick In the Wall

"Alright, Time Lord, let's see what you think is so impressive," Rose teased.

They stopped just before the opening that he had aimed for. He would have never found this place if there had been a door there.

"Close your eyes," he instructed. "No peeking." She complied. He took her hand and led her through the arch. Once inside a few steps, he let go of her and went behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders to guide her to the best spot to see everything. Once she was where he wanted her, he went back by her side and took her hand.

"Okay, you can open your eyes now," he told her, and watched her face for her reaction as she did so. The second she realized what she was seeing, her hand squeezed his and her face broke out in a smile.

"I know it's not the most magnificent sight in the universe, but I thought you might enjoy this bit of beauty in an area with so little color," he explained, referencing the extreme amount of black everywhere. He had told her earlier that the building materials were pitch black when baked into bricks.

"It's beautiful. Like the Secret Garden." Rose exclaimed in wonder.

The Doctor realized that she was right, this place did look a lot like the little garden's description from the book. It was completely closed in from all four sides except the opening into the alley, which barely counted, as the alley was so narrow and hidden. The walls that weren't part of the buildings next to the garden were up over their heads so that no one could see over them. It was obvious that the place was once a well tended and organized garden. The biggest tree in the space had a large limb that laid on the ground at one end and made the perfect place to sit. The Doctor suspected that the teal colored ivy that covered the wall on the other side of the space hid a doorway to the street on the other side. And the ivy covered the windows of the lower floors of the buildings on each side of the lot that the garden was in.

He went back behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, rested his hands on her stomach, and leaned in so he could put his mouth near her ear. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" he spoke in a low voice. "You know what else it is?"

"What?" she asked.

His lips touched the shell of her ear when he whispered, "It's secluded."

Almost immediately, he heard her breath catch, and a moment later, her skin flushed. He kissed her just behind her ear, and slowly made his was down her neck, leaving a little bite mark at her pulse point. He pushed her tank top up just enough so that his hands could brush the soft skin of her belly.

She turned her head so that she could kiss him properly, and was going to turn her whole body too, but he held her tighter to keep in place.

As he kissed her softly from behind, one hand moved up her belly, and the other moved down and dipped under the waistband of the skirt. He chuckled at her gasp when she realized what he had planned. She brought her left hand up to the back of his head and deepened their kiss. His fingers then pushed under her knickers, and his other hand pushed up her bra, freeing her breasts.

She moaned into his mouth when a finger swiped over her bud, and he gave one of her nipples a pinch at the same time. The scent of her arousal was very evident, even a full human could have smelled the pheromones coming off of her.

As he touched her, he had a thought that he had totally, completely, wholly, entirely become addicted to the gorgeous creature pressed against his front. She writhed against him and moaned, and it took everything he had to keep from turning her around and stripping her.

"Now, what you were saying earlier about patience?" he asked rhetorically. "I've been keeping an eye out for a nice, secluded place for almost three weeks now. I could have done this at any time, but I didn't. See? Very patient." He removed his hands from under her clothing and congratulated himself on maintaining his control. Not an easy thing with this human-ish body that sometimes moved on its own.

When she whimpered, he walked around her, trailing his fingers along her waist as he stepped in front of her. Then he pulled her to him and devoured her lips. His hands moved down to her arse, and he pulled her flush against him, so she couldn't miss what he intended.

XxXxXxXx

He was driving her insane, that's what he was doing. After he pulled her through the arch into the old garden, he had almost immediately set out to make her whole body scream.

"...I could have done this at any time, but I didn't. See? Very patient," he breathed into her ear. He withdrew his hands and teased her before he pulled her against him in a searing kiss. That's when she felt him, hard as a rock. He had held back a bit from her before then so she couldn't feel him.

"Done what?" she gasped out when he released her mouth and started moving down her neck. They had been together almost every day since the picnic where they were together for the first time, so what was he talking about?

He pulled back and looked her in the eyes. A smug grin spread across his face. Uh, oh.

The Doctor gently pushed her against the wall that she just realized was now right behind her and it clicked. Since they had became an official couple (threesome?), he had avoided walls. She hadn't even realized until now. All this time, he had been looking for a place outside of the TARDIS for the promised 'quick rut against the wall.'

"Oh," she both gasped out and let him know she understood.

He held her against the wall and pressed his lips to hers, kissing her exactly like he had the first time this version of him had back on Trilaxia Three. Quick, passionate kisses that stole her breath away. Her hands wound around his neck and settled in his hair, while his hands slowly pulled the hem of her skirt up.

She pulled her hands back from his great hair and started moving them down his body. As her fingers trailed down his chest, she considered unknotting his tie, but decided against it. When her hands reached the waistband of his trousers, he gave a moan and moved his kisses down to her neck. The motion made it so that his hips moved back a little bit, which gave Rose the room to work. As soon as the zipper was down, she moved the blue material away, exposing the boxers beneath.

He finally had her long skirt bunched up around her waist at about the same time that she pushed his pants down, freeing him. Rose ran her fingers down his length, and was rewarded with a deep groan, his fingers then thrust the material of her knickers to the side and slipped them in her, testing her readiness. A moment later, he pulled his hand back and brought it to his mouth. He sucked on his fingers like the other Doctor would do and moaned.

When he pulled his fingers out of his mouth and opened his eyes, which were now glazed over. "Still Gallifreyan enough for that to-oh," he rasped out and shuddered as Rose pulled him closer. He got the message, shut up, and hiked Rose up so that he and the wall were all that supported her. He pushed her knickers back to the side, and entered her with a groan.

When he was as deep inside of her as it was possible to get, he kissed her again and chirped, "Hello," which caused her to automatically repeat his word back to him, then giggle at the absurdity.

Her giggle was cut short when he began moving. It was amazing. Gravity both helped and hindered their movements, and she felt as if she were close to falling. Her legs were wrapped around him in a effort to hold herself up and to allow the Doctor to drive into her deeper.

The two of them were trying to keep quiet, as they were only about eight meters from a busy street, with only a low wall separating them from view. The only noises were soft moaning and grunting, the slapping of two bodies against one another, softly whispered names and expletives. Part of the fun of this was the possibility of getting caught. Even though the garden wasn't tended, it was easy to tell that people would walk in there and pick a fruit. And one corner looked like someone had started digging up the garden, maybe to take it over.

The rhythm that the Doctor set was promising to bring them both to orgasm quickly. She was so close already, so very, very close. The Doctor's movements became less even, and she knew that he was almost there as well. Just a little bit- "Oh!"

"Daddy! Hurry up! I wanna pick a geus before it gets dark!" A little girl squealed.

"Slow down, Kairririo, before you trip again," an older man replied.

They sounded close. The Doctor and Rose both reacted in what had to be record breaking time for a non-life threatening situation. The Doctor jumped back from Rose as Rose pulled her legs from around him and caught herself. The Doctor yanked up his pants and trousers as much as he could, then turned around away from the arch to try to set himself to rights. She heard him very quietly cursing his choice of trousers as he was making himself presentable and she would have laughed if she wasn't so busy making sure she was covered up as well.

Rose had just finished putting her top back in place when the little blue skinned girl came skipping into the old garden.

A quick look at the Doctor showed him to finally be zipped up, but he left his shirt untucked, probably to draw the eyes away from a certain part of his anatomy. Really, it just made him look even more like he had just been shagging.

"Hey Lady, whatcha doin' in our garden?" the little girl asked.

Rose bent down towards the little girl, in order to get closer to her level. "Oh, is this your garden?" Rose asked, sidestepping the question. "I didn't know this garden belonged to anyone. It looks like no one's owned it in such a very long time," she explained to the girl.

"We took it over last week," a gruff voice called from the archway. Rose looked over at the man, who she presumed was the girl's father, from what she heard before.

"What have we told you about talking to strangers, Kare?" another man asked. He was younger than the first man, and Rose wondered if maybe this was the little girl's father.

"Someone in the garden?" a squeaky voice asked. It was a short woman. Rose would have wondered if this was another child if it weren't for the fact that she was definitely a woman.

"What the hell are you doing in our veg?" a third male voice piped up, who was revealed to be the twin of the second man.

"We were just le-"

"Welll, we were exploring and came across this open arch," the Doctor interrupted Rose, having finally found his voice, though it was still a bit high. "And we noticed all this vegetation growing in here, and weelll, I find naturally growing plants to be a beautiful thing indeed, so we stopped in to look about and maybe have a picnic?" He looked over to Rose for help. "Right, Rose?"

She didn't have a better plan, so she nodded emphatically. She hoped they would get back to the TARDIS quickly, before she died of embarrassment. Or maybe regenerated. Well that would be one way to answer that particular question once and for all.

The oldest man looked them over, then glanced over to his daughter and the woman. "Kairririo, Nathanalie, stay here while I escort these two out of here." He then motioned for the two of them to follow him.

When the two time travellers and the three blue men were out in the alleyway and out of earshot of the garden. The men stopped the Doctor and Rose.

"I go to the little plot of land I earned the rights to last week to work with my wife, daughter, and brothers on making it into a usable plot for food, and what do I find there? Two foreigners shagging in my fucking garden! What do you have to say for yourselves?" The oldest man looked livid.

"Well, we were thinking that it was a nice, out of the way place that no one seemed to-"

And that makes it okay?" he spat.

"Well, we're just saying that maybe you should have a sign, or a door, doors are good, I like a good door. This would have never happened if you had a door-" He stopped his babbling in time to notice that the man was getting angrier. "Rose, I think we should-"

"Run!"

XxXxXxXx

Pronunciation:

Kairririo = care ri rE O

Nathanalie = nath a na lE


	3. Settled

"Rose, I think we should-"

"Run!" Rose shouted as she grabbed his hand. The two of them ran through the alleyway and all the way back to their home. The Doctor shouted insults at them as they went along. The men were faster than they looked.

Rose and the Doctor burst through the door of the TARDIS, laughing. The part human then turned to their pursuers and shouted, "And that goes for your dad too!"

One of the three blue skinned people picked up a rock and threw it at them, and just missed Rose. He ducked and shut the doors before the blue skinned people could throw something else at them. When he turned around and saw Rose and his twin, he burst out laughing again. The Time Lord just shook his head and sent them into the vortex. But he could tell that his counterpart with two hearts was smiling.

"That was all your fault!" Rose accused the Doctor in the black trench coat, she was still laughing, though.

"Oi! I didn't see you complaining!" he reminded her, then pushed her back against the doors of the TARDIS. He kissed her, and she pushed him back a bit.

"Who said I was complaining?" she asked, then walked toward the console. He watched her walk and swore that she was giving an extra wiggle for his benefit. She glanced back to him and noticed him watching her and gave him her special grin. The little minx was walking like that on purpose!

Both of them were still a bit out of breath from running. This damned body with it's one heart and no respiratory bypass. How did the people he had taken with him, mostly humans, keep up with him over the centuries? It wasn't so bad in his first three lives, or his seventh, but the other lives were younger, harder to keep up with. How did Rose do it? She had always, literally from the moment they met, been able to keep up and laughed the whole way. He'd have to ask her later. He'd learned to ask for advice about the human-y things. It was a helluva lot easier than muddling through it with no clue.

His thoughts were broken by his twin's laughter. Rose had just told him why they were running.

"Humans and the drive to procreate," he commented fondly. Rose rolled her eyes at that.

"OI!" he protested his twin's words. "What's you're excuse, then, Spaceman? Need I remind you of last week's closet incident?'" He rolled his eyes. "I find you shagging in that flippn' cupboard you hid from those guards in. How is that any different?"

The Doctor started stuttering. "Th-th-that's a whole different thing!" he spit out. "The adrenaline, and the closeness, and the danger, and the bond, and-" he looked to Rose for help.

Rose snorted and wagged her finger at him. "Don't look to me for help digging yourself out of this mess. I'm still counted amongst humans." She rummaged through her pockets and pulled out a hairbrush and small mirror. "Thought we were going someplace special."

"Right!" The Doctor went over to the monitor and started setting the coordinates. He then stared over at his twin with his eyebrow raised.

"What?"

"You might wanna smarten up there," he told him, "Frankly, you look like you were just shagging."

"That would be because I was just shagging," he reminded him, sarcastically, but stepped towards the hallway so he could get sorted out in a mirror. His other self was right, he was a bit of a mess. As he stepped passed Rose, he winked at her, fully aware that he had a wolfish grin on his face.

Rose blushed, and gave him a swat on the bum as he went passed on his way out of the room.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor left the room, and Rose worked on her hair. It wasn't bad, just a few flyaway pieces. I could be a lot worse.

When she was finished and the other Doctor had landed the TARDIS, he came over and sat down on the jump seat next to her.

"How was your shopping trip?" Rose asked.

"Good!" The Doctor grinned and started rummaging through his pockets. "I found a temporal watch! Now where is it? aha! Look at this," he started babbling enthusiastically. He handed her what looked like a steel watch with a square face. It didn't seem to have any power. "It automatically correlates with the date and time that you've landed in. This one was made on Earth, by humans in the 52nd century. I wonder what it was doing on Crespallion almost five billion years into the future?"

"Probably left by time travelers?" Rose ventured a guess.

"Yeah, that's a good theory, fits all of the facts. Brilliant."

"I've seen one of these before," Rose commented.

"Really?" the Doctor asked, surprised. "Where?"

"UNIT has one, might have one, I dunno how long they had it in that alternate timeline." She changed the subject. "So, where are we?"

"It's a surprise," he answered back. He looked smug. Time to knock that smugness down a notch.

"Or, the TARDIS might have taken us somewhere else, and you're just covering your bases in case we're not where we are supposed to be," she teased.

"Oi! We so are where we're supposed to be!" he exclaimed, acting affronted.

"Okay, then."

"I checked!"

Rose just giggled. The Time Lord tickled her in retaliation. A moment later, he froze.

"What's wrong?"

He looked at her, and backed up a bit, worrying her, then she heard him telepathically ask. _"Can you hear me?"_

 _"Of course I can hear you, what's up?"_ She could feel his relief through their bond, as well as see it on his face.

"When I touched you, what did you feel?"

"You mean other than being tickled?" She thought for a moment. Then she realized what was going on. "Oh, no feeling like I have to make a mental connection. Does that mean-"

"The bond is settled finally? Yes." He grinned and hugged her.

She pulled back and asked, "Finally?"

"Oh, normally, the bond would have been settled a week or so ago, at the latest. But you weren't born a telepath in a telepathic race, just slightly empathic, so it took longer, that's all."

"Why would it take longer?" she couldn't help but be curious about that.

"You know how he has had trouble with some of the human aspects of himself?" he jerked his thumb back towards the corridor, indicating the other Doctor.

"Yeah."

"It's like that. You grow up with certain things, and they come easy to you, they're something you don't even think about until you see someone else having trouble with it. The telepathy is like that. You're doing brilliantly, but you're still new to it, and bonds were just something we sort of just knew."

Then he kissed her softly. She felt the tingle of their bond, but no almost uncontrollable drive to connect deeper. "Mmmm, that's different."

"Good different or bad different?" Rose couldn't help but ask.

"Just different," he answered and kissed her again.

The other Doctor came back while they were kissing, straightened up. "There we go, much better. Ready to go?"

"Yep!"

The three of them stepped out of the TARDIS, and looked around. They stood in a city that looked like it could have been in Spain, had the sky not had a bit of a greenish tint to it.

"Okay, so where are we?"

"Oh, I want you to figure it out," the Doctor replied. "I've given you enough information about this planet for you to be able to pick it out."

"You have?" Rose asked.

"Oh, yes. Tell you what, though, if you can't figure it out in half an hour, I'll tell you," he promised her.

"Have we been here before?"

"Nope, well, I-we have, but you haven't," the Doctor in blue said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her lightly. "Allons-y, Rose Tyler, we've got places to be!"

They walked for a few minutes, headed toward a specific destination that Rose still didn't know. A woman walked by, walking her dog. It was a cute dog, very fluffy and small, it had long ears that looked like they had whiskers on the tips. It's muzzle was short, and suddenly, Rose knew exactly where they were.

"Oh, my god, did we actually make it to Barcelona?"


	4. Barcelona

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: okay, maybe it took longer than a week, 3 chapters turned into 7 :)
> 
> Pronunciation:  
> Nineoplan = nin E O plan

Bonds Chapter 4: Barcelona

As they walked down the street, Rose noticed a cute little dog. A dog that had no nose.

"Oh, my god, did we actually make it to Barcelona?" she asked incredulously. They had tried once after the Doctor's regeneration, but wound up saving an early Earth colony from a flood.

"Oh, yes!" the part human Doctor exclaimed. "I love it here."

"See?" the Time Lord said from the other side of her. "You did have all of the information you needed to identify this planet."

He put his hand in hers, and she almost went to give in to the connection when she realized that she wasn't compelled to do so anymore. Then she decided to leave herself open to the Doctor, so that if he wanted to anyway, he could.

Almost to her surprise, he did, and she almost sighed with the feeling. When had she become so dependent on the telepathy? After a moment's thought, she realized that she had been all along. She actually had a headache in the other universe that lessened considerably with telepathic contact.

"So, this is Barcelona, the capital city of Barcelona, the planet," the Doctor started his usual time and place lecture. "This planet was actually named Barcelona before humans found it, and was part of the reason that people found it and settled down after the solar flares of the 29th century roasted the Earth. The people had to evacuate Earth for a while."

"People leave Earth that soon?" Rose asked as they stepped onto a small foot bridge. She looked down into the water, which was incredibly clear. She could see some colorful fish in the water. The most common ones were purple with green stripes.

"Oh, yes," the part human Doctor took over. "Actually, that's the second great migration of humans. In the 24th century, a rather large group, mostly Americans and Canadians, left and terraformed a cluster of dozens of planets with hundreds of moons."

"But, back in the 29th century," the Time Lord broke back in. "When it became apparent that the flares were going to wipe out most life on Earth, A group of people were chosen to go into stasis and leave Earth for a few thousand years, until it was habitable again. They were supposed to restart humanity. The people were chosen based on skills and genetics. Sarah Jane was there when that group returned to Earth. There was a...problem, and it took twice as long as it should have for anyone to wake up," the Doctor reminisced fondly.

"I'll have to ask her about it sometime." Rose mused.

"Anyway, after that group left," the Doctor in blue continued, "the rest of the people began leaving in droves. Massive space ships all leaving Earth to find a new home. We'll have to take you to see one sometime. They're not at all what you'd expect."

The Doctor in brown took over the lecture there. "So, Spain's ship reached the orbit of a nearby planet, Nineoplan, 358 years after they took off. The small group who went down to the surface of Nineoplan came back with information about an uninhabited planet nearby called Barcelona, and the people took that as a sign."

"So, do the dogs have a sense of smell?" Rose asked curiously as she watched one of them, a small, black dog that looked much like a chihuahua scratch itself with its hind leg. The dogs she had seen so far had acted like any other Earth dog.

"See the extra long hairs at the tips of their ears?" The Doctor in Brown asked, pointing at one of the animals.

"Yeah."

"That's how they smell. They're somewhat similar in appearance as a cat's whiskers, but they're in a denser cluster and are actually exposed neurons. The placement allows them to smell where something's coming from."

"That's neat," Rose commented.

"Ah, here we are!" tghe Doctor in blue suddenly said. "You're gonna love this, Rose."

They went into a swanky restaurant next to the river they had just walked over. The trio were led downstairs to a glass room under the river.

"Ooh, you were right, I do love this," Rose sighed as she watched the colorful fish that swam around the clear room. She had seen pictures of similar types of places on Earth before, but had never been in one herself. The effect was even better in person.

They took their seats and ordered.

They ordered empanadas with a beef-like meat and white cheese that Rose couldn't identify, a savory coca, which was much like a pizza, and small pieces of marzipan.

Their waiter left and came back with small bread rolls and several versions of mojo. Rose and the part human Doctor had to try a bit of each sauce. The other Doctor didn't touch any of the hot sauces, he already knew that his tongue didn't like spicy.

When their meal came, the three of them pushed their plates toward the center of the table, so that all three could reach everything. It didn't matter who ordered what. Even back when the Doctor was all leather and ears and still one man, they rarely kept their tableware to their own plates all the time.

"Mmm," Rose moaned when she took her first bite of one of the empanadas.

"Best empanadas this side of Earth," the Time Lord said, around a bit of some.

"No running your trap when your mouth's full, ta," his twin admonished him. "I don't wanna see it after it goes in." He then took a bite of the coca, which mostly had grilled vegetables on it. Rose giggled at the Doctor's affronted look.

The part human swallowed his bite and grabbed another piece of the coca. "Here, try this out," he told Rose as he held it out to her. She opened her mouth and he popped the pizza-like morsel in her mouth.

"Good, yeah?" he asked, smugly. "This place gets the best meats, cheeses, and vegetables from all over. None of it's been processed, trans-matted, or anything unnatural, a rarity in this time." He took a bite of the baked and filled bread.

They ate the traditional Spanish food and watched the colorful fish while they told Rose more stories from their previous bodies, which included a fishing trip gone awry in his fourth body, and an incident where he decided to join in on the Running of the Bulls.

During a comfortable lull in the conversation, a rarity with one of the biggest gobs in the universe times two around, Rose saw a small boat pass overhead. She watched it in fascination, the oars made most of the fish run away from them, but several fish trailed along behind it.

"I just realized that's the first boat I've seen here," she commented.

"Oh, yeah, only small, people-powered watercraft are allowed on this particular waterway, and no fishing," the Time Lord said.

"Why's that?" she asked curiously.

"You'll see," he enigmatically said. "It's allowed several rooms like this to be built under the river, and allowed it to be a very clean waterway."

Rose was hand in hand with the Doctor as they stepped out of the restaurant. They walked forward to the edge of the river and she looked down into the clear water.

"I can't see the room we were just in, and I know it's right there," she pointed out.

"You wouldn't," the other Doctor lectured from behind her as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "The underwater rooms have a coating on them that keep them from being seen from above."

"Sort of like a two way mirror?" Rose asked.

"Sort of," he agreed. "Except it isn't reflective."

"Come on, then," the Doctor in brown said as he pulled softly on Rose's hand. "You'll want to see this."

The Doctor in blue pulled back from Rose and took her other hand. "Oh, yes," he agreed with a predatory grin that gave Rose a shiver.

For no reason at all, they ran, laughing all the way. People looked at them oddly or got out of the way as they went down the sidewalk on their way to wherever they were going.

The Doctor with two hearts, who was in the lead, slowed down as they turned on to a different street. The sun was in a downward trajectory in the sky, and it would be maybe 45 minutes before darkness set in. Just before they got to the next turn, he stopped and turned toward Rose.

"Close your eyes," he told her.

She gave him a suspicious look, but closed her eyes anyway. The Doctors each took a hand and led her forward and around the corner. The trio walked for what must have been two or three blocks before they stopped. Both Doctors kept their thoughts carefully shielded, but she could feel a bit of excitement from them.

"Okay, you can open your eyes now," one of the Doctors told Rose.

She opened her eyes and was greeted with a beautiful sight. The river ended in a waterfall that was just high enough to make a mist at the bottom of it. The water went into the edge of a small lake.

She turned around to look at the city, then back to take in the lake. No doubt about it. It looked like civilization ended right there at the waterfall.

"This is a protected area," the Time Lord said. "And the reason that the waterway above is restricted."

"'Sbeautiful," Rose breathed out. She'd never get used to seeing gorgeous places unexpectedly-she hoped.

The part human Doctor then reached down into the river and waved his hand in the water, like he was checking it. He then went over to the edge of the cliff and stood on the huge rock there, overlooking the lake.

"Careful," Rose warned. The rock looked dry and stable, but you could never really tell.

"Oh, don't worry, Rose," he assured her. "Even were I to fall, the water below is deep enough to keep me from being hurt." The confidence he displayed relieved her. "Come up here?" he asked and held his hand out.

She took his hand and stepped up on the large rock with him. She looked over, and was glad that she wasn't afraid of heights.

"People like to jump off this waterfall," the Doctor in brown informed her. "It's good fun, if you like an adrenaline rush," he added as he joined them on the rock and looked over. "You know, I just had a great idea," he said with amusement.

"Really?" Rose asked. "None of us are exactly dressed for that, are we?"

"Nope," the other Doctor. "But if you were dressed for it, you'd be improperly dressed according to local laws."

"Oh, so that's why all the women are wearing full length skirts!" Rose realized, glancing back at the city.

"Yep," one of the Doctors said from behind her.

"It's almost dark, we'll freeze," Rose warned, barely keeping a straight face.

"Water's warm, and once we get out, we'll be dry quickly," the part human replied in a sing song voice.

"The stuff in our pockets will get wet," she advised with a lifted eyebrow.

"Nah," the Time Lord replied. "One of the benefits of trans-dimensional engineering."

Rose allowed herself to grin and backed up from the edge of the cliff. The twin Time Lords knew what she was about to do and stepped aside to make sure she had plenty of room. She ran forward, yelling, "Geronimo!" and jumped out over the cliff face. She flipped in the air and squealed on the way down. It wasn't her most graceful fall ever, but she did manage to go in straight.

When she landed in the water, her skirt and hair billowing out around her, she took a moment to get her bearings, then swam to the surface. Her lungs burned before she broke the surface of the water and took a deep breath. As she figured out which way she faced now, she wondered- if she could regenerate, would her next body have respiratory bypass? The Doctor, the one who still had it, could stay underwater for a really long time and not even seem out of breath.

Rose had to turn around to look up at the Doctors, who both stood at the edge of the cliff watching her. She raised her arms in triumph to let them know she was okay, then remembered that they were all telepathic and she could have done that before she even came out of the water.

She swam backwards away from the cliff face and told them, _"Come on in, the water's fine."_

A moment later, both of them were falling toward her. The one in blue opted for a feet first landing, His arms were flapping like he was trying to fly, and Rose laughed at it. The Doctor in brown was going in head first. His hands were together in the classic dive position.

The two of them disappeared underwater at almost the same time. The Doctor in blue came up first, which was no surprise, as he didn't have the respiratory bypass and the way he hit the water meant he wouldn't have gone quite as deep as the other one would have. His previously spiky hair now laid plastered to his scalp, and rivulets of water ran down his forehead and over his nose. They giggled and swam over toward each other.

"Okay, now, where is 'e?" she wondered, more to herself than anything.

"Oh, I dunno," the Doctor replied nonchalantly. "Somewhere down there."

He wasn't fooling her for a second. Before she could accuse them, she felt something brush her ankle and she jumped. The action in water caused her to slip under for a moment, and she came back up coughing and sputtering. The water next to her surged up, and the Time Lord broke through the water.

"Whoops. Sorry 'bout that," he apologized.

She glared at him, and without warning, shoved a wall of water in his face. And the fight was on. Their clothes dragged them down, though, and it didn't last long before they all climbed out of the water, laughing. The sun was almost down, and the area under the cliffs were in deep shadow. They were cooling off fast and Rose shivered. They dried off quickly thanks to the sonic. She didn't understand how that worked, but it warmed her up while she was being dried.

When that was finished, the first stars were coming out, and they watched more and more stars appear in the sky as it got darker. Not as many as they would see if they got farther from the city, but there were a lot of stars.

"You know, no matter when and where I was and what was going on around me, I've always loved looking up at the sky and watching the stars," Rose told the other two.

"Yeah?" one of the Doctors said behind her.

"Oh, yes. I used to go out on the roof and watch the stars. I've done that since I was, I dunno, eight, nine? Probably woulda done that sooner, but that's when I got the idea to sneak out."

She heard both Doctors chuckle behind her and turned to watch them.

"This place was so worth the wait," she told them with a smile and was rewarded with matching grins. She turned her gaze back to their surroundings and both Doctors came up to her, took a hand, and laced their fingers with hers. They stood there, enjoying the sights for a moment before they headed off to the TARDIS.

Once they got there and in the Vortex, they all went to the lab where the TARDIS coral grew. There, they added the items they had picked up in Crespallion to the rest of the collection of future parts and started jiggery pokerying them into TARDIS parts.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge shout out to everyone who reviews, subscribes, and whatnot, I probably wouldn't have kept this series going so long without you :)


	5. Vortex Manipulator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: the Doctors, Rose, the TARDIS, etc belong to the BBC. I'll put them back later. Fever belongs to Peggy Lee. Starlight and Time is Running Out belong to Muse. If I owned any of them, crochet and knit would be just a hobby again, and not my job.
> 
> This chapter gave me fits, it's just a little interlude until the next bit, but has important information in it. I just finally said 'screw it' and am posting it now.

 

A few hours later, the part human Doctor had been looking for Rose for about 15 minutes when he came upon the door to Rose's practice room. He stepped into the odd room and looked around. There were mats all over the place, walls and pillars of all sizes that could be moved around, handholds and small cubbyholes in the walls, and gymnastics equipment all over the place.

He couldn't see her, but he knew she was there, because of the music playing. Music always played whenever Rose was in here. This time, the song played softly, and he couldn't tell which direction it was coming from.

_...Captain Smith and Pocahontas, had a very mad affair. When her daddy tried to kill him, she said, "Daddy oh don't you dare." He gives me fever..._

He walked around the massive room for a minute, looking all over the place for his quarry. About the same time he saw her, the song changed.

_...Far away from my memories of the people who care if I live or die. Starlight, I will be chasing your starlight, until the end of my life..._

She sat at a long table hidden away in a corner. Her face was close to a magnifying glass and a leather strap was laid out on the table. There were teeny tiny bits and bobs next to it. Rose picked up one of them with a hand covered in- was that an electrostatic discharge glove? It was! She was wearing white ESD gloves.

She carefully put the little piece in the leather strap, and used a small screwdriver- one that just does screws- to put it in place. She did the same with the other three pieces, which he now recognized as a Vortex manipulator. It looked different than the manipulators of this universe, and he knew it was the one she had found in the other universe, the one she had gotten a replacement crystal for. He hadn't seen it before that moment and hadn't thought that she still had it.

She was fixing it, but he didn't understand why. Why would she need one of those damned space hoppers?

He had to admit it, though, seeing her tinker was captivating. She was concentrating, with her tongue sticking out. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail to keep it out of her face. He was reminded that they hadn't finished their 'conversation' earlier.

The Doctor knew that she had done some engineering, but hadn't seen her put her new skills to use before. He realized that in their TARDIS part work session, they'd given her the simplest things. They hadn't even thought about it. She could handle so much more, and would need to in the future. The little TARDIS-to-be had bonded to her right away. Whether she wanted it or not, she was going to be the custodian of one of only two TARDISes in existence.

He felt bad about watching her without her knowledge, but at the same time, he didn't want to disturb the obviously delicate work she was doing.

The song playing changed again, and he was listening to the song Rose had sung when she gave them the books, music, and tea seeds from the other universe. _I think I'm drowning, asphyxiated. I wanna break this spell that you've created. You're something beautiful, a contradiction. I wanna play the game, I want the friction..._ It was the reason that he had taken her to that concert.

Rose had started singing to the song as she replaced the panel that covered the intricate bits of the Vortex manipulator. She put down the leather strap, removed her gloves, and picked it back up.

"Okay, 'ere we go!" Rose exclaimed before she pressed the button. Lights lit up, and she stood up in triumph. "Yes!" A couple of the lights went out, and a little red one flickered before it died. She put the manipulator down on the table and bent over it, her hands clenched on the edge of the table.

"Two weeks! Two bloody weeks I've been workin' on ya, and all yer good for 's scannin' and a teleport for one!" She hit the table, and the screwdriver she had been using rolled almost to the edge of the table.

The Doctor was just about to make his presence known, when suddenly Rose shouted "'M bloody useless, that's why! Two weeks to get a simple teleport to work!" She growled, picked up the screwdriver, and threw it.

XxXxXxXx

Rose was furious. She thought that she had the Vortex manipulator finally calibrated properly. After two weeks of working on it, all she had managed to do was get the short range teleport back online. It had shorted out in the other universe. The wrist strap was only powerful enough to transport one person through space without access to the Vortex.

All she had to do was get it calibrated to this universe, and it'd be good to go. The Doctors both could probably get the damned thing fixed in about a minute. She didn't expect that, but she did expect to be able to do it in 2 weeks. She had helped build a dimension crossing device with nothing more than 21st century Earth knowledge, so why couldn't she do a calibration?

She growled and threw the tiny screwdriver that she had used to work on the wrist strap. She knew she shouldn't have, but it felt good to throw something.

That's when she noticed him.

The Doctor stood there, in his blue suit, looking like a deer in the headlights. The screwdriver had zipped right past him.

"Whatever it was, I didn't do it," he said with his hands up. When Rose smiled at his antics, he put his hands down and came on over to the work table.

"'M sorry, I didn't know you were there," she apologized.

"You couldn't have," he replied back. "I didn't know you had a little workshop in here too. What else have you got hidden away here?" He picked up the leather strap, raised an eyebrow, and asked, " And what're you trying to fix this thing for?"

She took the device from him, a bit annoyed. "I do some work 'ere sometimes, 'cause I've got a button that turns on telepathic shielding if I want privacy. As for fixin' that, it's mine, why not?"

"You live in a time machine. You're growing your own time machine. We just picked up stuff for your future time machine today and spent a couple hours working on it. You don't need this _thing_ ," he replied, gesturing to the Vortex manipulator with a look as if it had personally offended him.

"Whatcha got against Vortex manipulators?" Rose asked.

"Time travel without a capsule," he stated with a disgusted look on his face.

Rose shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I was thinkin' 'bout bein' separated from the TARDIS, or having to get out of a jam quickly. I can think of a couple times where this thing woulda come in handy."

"True," he conceded, then took out his sonic, pushed his glasses further up his nose, and held his hand out to Rose so she could give him the wrist strap. "Here, I'll take a look at it and see what's wrong. Should be fixed in a tick."

"It needs calibrated to this Vortex, and no," she said and held the Vortex manipulator away from him. "There's a reason I didn't jus' bring it to you in the first place," she told him, pointing a finger at him.

The Doctor looked like someone had taken a toy from him. He crossed his arms and leaned back against her work table, looking down. "Why's that, then?" he asked after a moment.

"'Cause I want ta do it myself," she told him. "I can do this. I need to do this. I've already fixed the teleport, which shorted out the last time I used it and took the laser out as well. All I need now's the link to Time. It's just a matter of findin' the right resonance an' calibratin' the Vortex manipulator to it so that it can work in this universe."

The Doctor was grinning by the time Rose finished her babble.

"What?" she asked.

"Rose Tyler, look at you. You're absolutely brilliant." He said with pride as he looked her up and down.

It was a moment before she noticed that the look in his eyes was lust. She still wasn't used to that.

He came over to her, took the Vortex manipulator from her hands, and laid it on the table. The softly playing music changed again.

"Rose Tyler, may I have this dance?" the Doctor asked as he held a hand out to her.

Rose took his hand and let him pull her into a close hug. The two of them swayed to the song.

XxXxXxXx

As the Doctor and Rose softly swung to Snow Patrol's _Run_ , he wondered when he started doing things like this, then decided that it was a quirk of being part human, never mind dancing with her before this version of him had ever come into existence.

"I have a surprise for you," Rose whispered in his ear while they swayed.

"Ooh, what?" he asked. He loved surprises.

"Well," she softly said. "If you still want to, we can make our bond an actual, proper bond now."

 _Yes, yes, yes!_ His mind cheered _. Of course I still want that._ He pulled back to look into her eyes. She met his gaze, biting her lip a little shyly.

"The bond is finally settled?" he asked. He knew the answer, had known that the strong bond between Rose and his other self had settled as soon as the other Doctor had known, but hadn't known how to bring up the topic. He was glad that Rose had quickly brought it up herself. That had dispelled some of the previously unknown insecurity that had creeped in while the links between the three of them were lopsided.

When Rose nodded, his lips found hers and he kissed her hungrily.

"Let's get to a more comfortable place, shall we?"


	6. Levels of Telepathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: unbeta'd
> 
> Spoilerific warning: Includes a sex scene, with a touch of voyeurism.
> 
> Lots of information in here. I hope it makes sense. My midget hasn't been letting me think. Do all four year olds talk and bounce that much?

In the search for a comfortable place to strengthen their link, Rose was led to the Doctors' room. Once inside, he instructed her to sit down in the middle of the bed. She kicked off her shoes and sat down, crossed her legs, and waited for him. He shucked his shoes and sat down in front of her, legs also crossed. Their knees were just about touching each other.

Despite the intimate setting, Rose could tell that the Doctor looked like he was in lecture mode. He was even wearing the spectacles. Of course this Doctor wore his glasses most of the time, as he actually needed them on close up things. But that wasn't the point.

"Okay, before we get into this, I need to give you more information on the bonds. There are several types of telepathic bonds," the Doctor began. "As you know, we have the lightest link that can be made between us, that of the student and teacher. It's the most transcendental. There are also different types of familial bonds, but we're not concerned about them. Then there's what we're about to do. There's three different types of bonds between couples. Two lesser mating bonds, and an unbreakable marriage bond."

"And one of the lesser bonds is what you said ours is wanting to change into?" Rose asked. She had been listening in rapt attention. Some of this information had been told to her before, but a lot of it was new.

"Yes, the lighter of the two. It's like the equivalent of, um, seriously dating, well, maybe engagement in human terms," the Doctor told her. "Usually, that bond allows two people to easily send words and thoughts across a shorter distance, usually only across a city at the furthest. It's enough for most things, and you have to deliberately send."

"But we already have that, and at a much greater distance," Rose observed.

"Yes, we do, a bit more actually, we can send images and feelings too. I think that's part of the reason that our link's wanting to change," the Doctor agreed. "But most of that is because of you. You're not a touch telepath."

"Oh, okay. Let me make sure I heard that right," Rose said with a 'hold on a minute' gesture. "Because I'm not a touch telepath, we're able to do things you wouldn't normally be able to do?" Rose asked.

"Got it," he affirmed, then continued his lecture. "The other courtship or mating type bond is what you and he have. It's the type of bond that most married couples on Gallifrey had. This link between two people is very strong, and it has a settling stage where when the two people touch, they have a strong desire to connect even deeper. Which you've noticed," he finished sheepishly.

"I might have done, yeah," Rose joked. She felt light at the knowledge that what she had was deep for his people and the Time Lord seemed to be perfectly fine with it. The fact that this Doctor wanted to deliberately do this with her made her even happier.

"That desire was used to forge attachment between two people who were politically or genetically together. That link's supposed to work like our current one is working now, but you know how it's working with the two of you."

Rose nodded. Then a thought hit her and she asked, "Politically or genetically together?"

"Most marriages were arranged," the Doctor told her, a little nervously.

"Oh, so it's like some rich people used to do on Earth." Rose then decided that the Doctor was too fidgety on this subject and was it best left for now. She turned the conversation back to the bonds.

"So, what's the unbreakable bond?" Rose asked curiously. Rose thought he looked stunned for a second, but his demeanor changed again and she was sure that she had been imagining it.

"Soul bound," the Doctor said. "That's what we always called it. It, um, is a lot like what you have with him," he said, jerking his thumb toward the open door to indicate the full Galifreyan. "But it's more, a lot more. Also, you can still feel one another when you're in different time zones or even communicate across the galaxies with some difficulty. It was very rare that people would choose to go with that." When he was finished, he tugged at his ear nervously.

"Wow," Rose whispered in awe. That would be wonderful, to be able to talk at that distance, and know everyone was alright even in different times.

"No," the Doctor suddenly told her.

"No, what?" Rose asked.

"I don't need telepathy to know that you're thinking about going that far," the Doctor told her, a little sternly.

"Yeah, I am," Rose said. "I'd do it."

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor sat knee to knee with Rose on the bed and gave her an overview of the different types of bonds and how they worked. He had planned to barely touch the topic of the strongest telepathic link, but Rose didn't flinch when he told her that the link she shared with his other self and planned to share with him was mostly used in marriage. That was quickly followed by a direct question about the topic he had hoped to gloss over. The combination had him spilling everything.

When he was finished, he knew what she was thinking from the look on her face. She was actually considering that. He was pretty sure that he told her about the unbreakable part.

"I'd do it," she told him, looking him right in the eyes.

Suddenly, he didn't know if he wanted to pin her to the bed and have his way with her, or run and keep running.

"I can't," he whispered, fighting the urge to run.

Why not?" Rose asked him softly after a moment. He could see the sorrow in her eyes.

"I did tell you that it couldn't be reversed, right? We'd be bound to each other always," he told her, imploring her to understand what he wasn't telling her.

"Yeah, I'm not seeing a problem here," she said. Then her expression changed. "Unless you wouldn't-"

"No, no!" he interrupted her quickly. "Don't think that." He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her deeply, opening himself up so that she could feel every one of his emotions. His love, his fear, all of it.

Before it could go any further, he pulled back and put his forehead against hers. "I will always love you, my Rose." Before she could say reply, he gave her another quick kiss, then straightened up and took her hands.

"The only way to break that bond is if one of the people involved in it dies," he told her softly.

Rose nodded her head and swallowed. "I thought as much," Rose replied. "It's still worth it to me, just so you know." She smiled sadly and squeezed his hand in reassurance.

He was touched, but there was still more. "The bond's break is agony for the person still alive. The death of a loved one is hard enough, but the telepathic break is said to be excruciating, both physically and mentally."

Rose's smile had dropped from her face, followed by her gaze. He could see her thinking about it. After 5.2 seconds, she looked back up at him.

"Still worth it," she sniffed.

"We'd be able to see everything the other person has ever done, nothing would be hidden," he told her.

When he saw that she was still wavering, he was astonished. She'd be willing to go through agony and to bare her soul for a deeper connection to him? He wasn't worth that. He decided to go ahead and add the last point. "People have been known to lose their minds when their bond-mate dies, Rose. Some have even followed them into death. That's why I will never forge that kind of link with someone, well, with anyone. Because the repercussions outweigh the benefits."

XxXxXxXx

Rose was willing to go through pain for the strongest link if he wanted it. She was willing to let him see everything, all the things she had needed to do after they had been split up, and even everything she didn't want him to see. She knew she'd see who he had become in the War, who he had been before, and what he had done after the events of Canary Wharf.

Then he told her about what would happen when one person inevitably outlived the other. She agreed, that was too much.

She got up on her knees and wrapped her arms around the Doctor's neck. It didn't take much before she was in his lap, holding on to him with her face buried in his neck. His arms were wrapped around her, holding her tightly.

The conversation had become a painful reminder that the man holding her would most likely die long before her. It was something she thought of almost every day. It drove her to spend as much time with him as possible, to make as many wonderful memories as she could. She still couldn't quite picture the centuries ahead of her, but she did know that she wouldn't push everyone away like the Doctor had before. Maybe her stance would change in a few centuries, but she hoped not.

The two of them sat there for a while, she didn't know how long, in silence. They lightly rocked, and she didn't know who started that, but it felt good.

"Not tonight," the Doctor whispered, breaking the comfortable silence.

She didn't need to ask what he was talking about, she already knew. They wouldn't strengthen their link with one another, not that night. She pulled back and met his eyes, nodding her understanding.

He leaned down, brushing his lips lightly with hers. Their kiss remained softer this time, more loving, not as deep. One of her hands found its way under his jacket, and she felt one of his hands push up the back of her shirt and rub her skin there. After a moment, his hand had made it's way up to the band of her bra and he was trying to undo it with one hand, but a couple of the hooks slid right back into the loop. She pushed off his jacket. They removed clothes from each other slowly, one piece at a time, exploring one another's bodies as they were exposed.

They'd never been together quite like this before. Sex with the part human Doctor was usually a bit wilder, a hormone ridden affair. They'd go at it like a pair of teenagers.

This time wasn't sex, though, this could only be called making love.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor walked through the hallway towards the room he shared with his sort of twin. His twin had sent him a notice that they were going to be strengthening their bond with one another. He wanted to be there. When his bond with Rose had been forged, the two of them had passed out. It wasn't really dangerous, but anything that rendered a person unconscious should be watched over.

He had given them some time to have the conversation that he should have already had with Rose. Yet another thing he had neglected. With his mind full of self depreciating thoughts, he went to the door that had been left open and stepped inside.

Just inside the door, he stopped short. They had started without him.

On the bed, his other self and Rose were tangled up in one another. Both of them were completely naked, and were slowly rocking. They both stared in one another's eyes. This was different to how they usually were when he walked in on them.

 _Walk away before you are noticed, or join in next time._ His other self had said the first time he had walked in on them.

More often than not, he'd join in, but this time, it felt like they should be left alone. He'd have walked back out, but if they were strengthening their link, he really should be there.

The other Doctor threw his head back and groaned, his eyes closed in ecstasy. When he opened them, the part human turned his head and looked him right in the eyes.

He then knew that they weren't going to be doing the bond that night, so he nodded to his other self, and stepped back out of the room, giving the two part humans their moment.


	7. Contentment

The Doctor sat in the doorway of the TARDIS, his legs dangled out into the nothingness, watching the swirly colors of a nebula. He was deep in thought. One part of his mind was enjoying the light show; another part was analyzing all of Rose's test results so far.

The changes in her physiology were happening so slowly, and he wondered, not for the first time, just how long it had been for her since Canary Wharf. That train of thought led down darker paths, full of self hatred. But before he could start down one of those paths, the object of his thoughts entered the console room.

"I thought you were asleep," the Doctor commented.

"Mind doesn' wanna sleep," she told him.

"Ah," he replied. He knew how that was.

"You looked like you were in deep thought. Wha' were you thinkin' abou'?" she asked.

"Oh, you know, the usual: life, the universe, and everything," he replied.

"Oh, is tha' all?" Rose teased. She sat down beside him in the doorway and swung her legs out into space. She kicked her legs back and forth.

"Dunno if I'll ever ge' used to this," she commented. "I 'ope not."

"I hope you don't either," he agreed.

"Are you?" she asked. "Used to it, I mean," she clarified.

"Yeah," he replied.

"Do ya ever lose the wonder?" she asked.

"Yeah," he told her. "Quite often." He sighed. This was something he didn't really want to discuss, but it needed to be talked about. He'd been far too neglectful in other things. "We make all of time and space our backyard, Rose. Eventually, you're just going to have a backyard. You can still enjoy it, but it's not the same as when it was new."

Rose stared at him sadly and said, "Oh."

"Now don't get me wrong," he reassured her. "The universe has still got one hundred trillion years after your time, plus a good trillion years before your time, and so many millions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars. There's always something to get excited about."

The Doctor watched her processing this information. She was still getting used to the idea that she'd live a long time. He was certain that the enormity of what happened to her still hadn't sunk in yet.

"Is that why you bring people with you?" Rose asked. "To see the wonder again through their eyes?"

"Sometimes," he replied. She knew that feeling already. She'd asked a few people on board before. Of them, only Jack had worked out, and he'd been a time traveler on his own before meeting them. Not everyone was cut out for their way of life.

They sat there for a couple minutes in silence. She watched the nebula, still kicking her feet. He watched her and wondered what was going on in her mind. Neither of them were deliberately making any sort of mental connection, but through their close proximity, he could feel her melancholy. That feeling was interrupted by a short burst of mild amusement that felt like a mental snort.

"Penny for your thoughts?" the Doctor asked, wondering what was so amusing.

"You know, even a month later, every time I wake up, I expec' to not be here," Rose said in a low voice after a moment.

"Where do you expect to be?" he asked.

"In another universe. Maybe 'm wandering the multiverse still. Maybe 'm locked up inna mental hospital, 'cos I gotta be mad," she replied. She sounded like she thought all of those things were a distinct possibility.

He took her hand and squeezed it. "You're right here," he confirmed. "And you're definitely wandering, though not through the multiverse, but what makes you think you've gone mad?"

She gave him an 'are you kidding me?' look and pointedly glanced back at the console, then turned and looked out at the nebula. "Really?" she asked.

"Oh, right," he chuckled, which caused Rose to roll her eyes and smile.

"How long has it been for you, since that day with the Daleks and the Cybermen?" he asked, taking advantage of her allusion to the time they had spent apart.

Rose let out a deep breath and thought for a moment. "I don't know," she admitted. "Different universes are, well different. I could be stuck in one for a couple weeks and be back in just thirty minutes. Then there were the times I used my Vortex manipulator." She paused. "Wait a minute. You don't know?" she changed the subject. "I mean I've seen you look at a person and just know how old they are."

"I make it a point to not look at the timelines of those I'm close to," he told her. "How would you feel if you knew that most of the possibilities of a friend's life were tragedy?"

"Good point," she agreed, then leaned in. "Could you look at my past to see? You know, without the future?"

The Doctor rubbed his neck nervously. "Um, well, I can't," he admitted.

"I've got nothing to hide. You'll learn it all eventually," she assured him, not understanding.

"No, I mean I literally can't with you," he explained. "Even if I wanted to, I can't."

Rose stared at him, brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I can't see one moment of your timelines, past included," he explained. "When I first saw you, I saw a glimmer of a bright and shining life, but then, when I wound up at your flat, from then on, there was nothing."

"Why's that, then?" Rose asked.

"I was never sure, and I wonder if it's just me, or all Time sensitive beings," he replied. "Your best guess on how long?" he asked, trying to get the best answer possible out of her.

"Okay, I know four and a half years went by for Mum an' everyone," Rose replied after a moment. "Not long after I got the Vortex manipulator, I'd occasionally jump to the future, so tha' was maybe another year? After we got the dimension cannon workin', then maybe two and a half for me during the jumping." She thought again. "Yeah, that's probably about right," she affirmed.

"Eight years?" he nearly squeaked, shocked. Four of those years mostly alone. It had only been a few years for him. Knowing Rose's grasp on the passage of time, it was probably a little longer. His Rose was around twenty-nine or thirty.

"Yeah, I guess," Rose replied, not meeting his gaze. "Like I said, though, 's hard to tell."

They both sat there for a while, in companionable silence, holding each other's hand with their fingers laced. Rose absently drew little circles on his hand with her thumb. It was a comfort gesture of hers.

"So," he broke the silence after about five minutes. "I've still got that tea if you can't sleep. You may not need quite as much sleep as you used to, but your reaction if you don't get enough hasn't changed," he teased, bumping her shoulder. Rose glared at him for his cheek. He ignored the glare and gave her a big grin.

"Nah, I don' need the tea," Rose answered, shaking her head.

"So, what's got your mind going enough you can't sleep. You're tired, I can feel it," the Doctor pressed.

"'Sit weird that 'm worried about this bondin' thing?" Rose asked after about 30 seconds.

"No, it's not weird," the Doctor assured her. "I wonder, though. You've had the same mental link to me for a couple of weeks. What's got you nervous?"

"Well, we didn' exactly plan ours, did we?" Rose answered. "No chance to be a bit nervous."

"What I did then," he tried to explain. "That shouldn't have happened." Rose opened her mouth to interrupt, probably to tell him that she really didn't mind or that it wasn't his fault, but he held a finger up to stop her. "I'm the more experienced telepath, by centuries," he told her. "It's all on me. And what I did then, creating a bond without your knowledge, consent, or even talking to you about it beforehand carries very stiff sentences in almost every telepathic culture. Many of them include death, if that doesn't kill or permanently incapacitate the victim. You'd have to be out of your own control to not receive a sentence," he lectured her.

Rose's eyes were wide and her mouth open a little in shock. He nodded to let her know that it was true. He had kicked himself over it at first, but once he realized that it wasn't the permanent bond, he had turned his attention to other matters.

"It's good that you're nervous about it, though," he continued his lecture, moving from the uncomfortable topic of their unplanned bond. "A bond is not something that should ever be taken on lightly, even the weakest of them. Why are you two doing this?" he asked. They hadn't discussed the links between them much. Yet another oversight on his part.

"Many reasons," Rose replied. "There's the practicality of it. We'd be able to contact one another easier. I'd be able to tell when somethin' 'appens to 'im. More'n anything, though, 'e asked, and I love 'im," she explained.

"He asked? When?" he queried, surprised. He couldn't see himself asking for that. It was amazing now that he had it, but he couldn't see himself seeking it out. He'd feel too vulnerable.

"Yeah, the next day after we bonded," she answered. "He said somethin' about it changing on its own an' 'e wanted to control it?"

"You're using that connection for a lot more than it was intended for," he mused. "Yep, it's gonna wanna morph." He grinned at her, and proclaimed, "Rose Tyler, you're doing it for all the right reasons."

She grinned back, and said, "I know that, Silly." Rose glanced back toward the corridor and then back at him. "You know," she started. "It just hit me how very odd this is. I just sat here and told you how I love someone else."

"And I'd be completely jealous if that someone else wasn't also a version of me," he assured her. "Come'ere."

The Doctor pulled his legs into the TARDIS and sat sideways, putting his right foot against the other door, and his left went back out the door into space. He pulled Rose in to sit on his lap. She went willingly, settling down with her ear against his chest and his arms around her.

He allowed their bond to fully bloom and heard her audibly sigh when he did so. Rose had left herself open for him whenever he was ready. He felt her apprehension, which was quickly disappearing, be replaced with happiness.

Holding and feeling each other like this was more intimate than any physical act could ever be, and he found himself glad that their link to one another had settled, so that they weren't immediately ripping the clothing off of one another as soon as they had the chance. Not that that wasn't fun, he'd just felt a bit out of control before.

He felt an agreement from Rose, whose breathing had started to slow down a little. She loved listening to his heartsbeat. He'd known for a while that the rhythm calmed her, and he was happy to provide the service.

14 minutes, 35 seconds after he'd pulled her into his lap, her mind went into a sleep pattern. He chuckled to himself and shifted her so he could get up and take her to bed.

Once they hit the bedroom where his other self laid, he put her in bed next to him and pulled the covers up over her. He watched the pair of them for a moment, then made a decision. He undid his tie and started taking his many layers off. Once he was down to his pants, he climbed in and wrapped his arm around his sleeping love. Rose mumbled and scooted in closer, allowing him to get his other arm around her as well.

He drifted off to sleep, content, and did he dare say, happy?


	8. Stronger Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really super smutty chapter. I was a naughty girl.

The next morning, or what passed for morning on the TARDIS, Rose woke up, sprawled out over half of the spacious bed. The Doctor laid next to her on his side, facing her, one of his hands laid on her stomach. He looked so peaceful. The other Doctor wasn't in the room, and a quick query to the ship told her that he was in the lab where they were growing her TARDIS. She considered just laying there until the part human woke up, but her body had other needs.

Ten minutes later, she walked into the lab where the Doctor in brown was, while pulling a hairbrush through her locks.

"Hello," the Doctor greeted her as soon as she stepped through the door. He held the log book that Rose used to keep notes in his hands, and she was sure he was going over the little one's growth.

"Hi," she replied.

"This little beauty is growing phenomenally well," the Doctor praised. "Aren't you?" he cooed to the coral, which was approximately the size of a football, and had a few branches sticking out of it.

Rose had to fight the urge to laugh, as she always had when he took to stroking and babying the TARDIS coral. She realized that she did the same herself. She went over to the tank that housed the coral and said to it, "Good morning, Sweetie."

The Doctor handed her favorite mug to her. She took it thankfully and took a sip of the hot liquid.

"Mmm, caffeine," Rose moaned. She almost missed the look that the Doctor gave her out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to put down her mug and hide her grin. "So," she asked, getting down to business. "What have you done?"

"Just finished checking the nutrient levels and all the little things that you do. I wanted to scan you while you were transferring artron to the TARDIS," he told her.

"Why?" she asked, her brows furrowed. She was starting to feel like a science experiment.

"Welll, I haven't done it before," he answered. "And I'm curious as to what's going on."

"Curiosity killed the cat, you know," she informed him.

"More lives than a cat, me," he bantered back. "That phrase used to be 'care killed the cat.' Shakespeare used it in his play Much Ado About Nothing. ' _What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care,'"_ he quoted.

She still didn't like Shakespeare. Nothing he could do or say would make her like those plays. Or Elizabethan English for that matter. She rolled her eyes and put her hand out to the coral. The moment her hand touched it, she felt the coral pulse in her mind, and it slowly started to glow, like the branches in the console room did when the lights were low. She stroked the coral for about 15 seconds, then pulled her hand back.

"Did you get what you needed?" Rose asked as she picked her mug back up.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor replied. He studied the three different scans he had taken. "But that's-"

"What now?" Rose interrupted, not wanting to hear the word she was 99 percent sure that he was going to say next.

"Well, as we knew already, the artron you're using is just a little bit of what's in you, and there's no ill effects," he told her.

"But that's not what's got you all worked up," Rose observed.

"The coral grew," he said, his voice was a little high pitched. He stared at the object in question.

"It's supposed to do that," she told him in a mock whisper. "That's the whole point of this." She bumped his shoulder and received an eye roll from the Doctor for her cheek.

"In 15.4 seconds, it grew 0.6% in volume," he marveled, and scribbled something in the log. She was certain it was the fact he had just cited.

"Wow, that's quite a bit." She was impressed. Old Rose would have asked if that was good. New Rose knew that that was quite an achievement in such a short time, even if she couldn't do the math in her head to find out just how much of an achievement it was.

Just then, the other Doctor walked past the open door, then backed up and walked into the lab. He ruffled his hair and yawned. The Doctor who was fully dressed rushed over to him and started babbling about what just happened. The part human Doctor looked at him like he was spouting gibberish, even though he should know everything.

"Oh, bugger off," he snapped as his two hearted double as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"What?" the Doctor in brown's eyes went wide.

"I just woke up, get outta my face and lemme get coffee," the ex Time Lord said slowly.

"What? Your brain not working properly?" the Time Lord teased.

"No, I don't want to be attacked with babble first thing when I wake up. There's a difference," the part human retorted.

Rose watched this exchange with amusement. It was times like these that the differences between them became more apparent. Their teasing one another could get out of hand, though. They'd sometimes show just how much they hated themselves. One day, they'd learn just how much stronger they were together.

"Hello," Rose interjected before they could go farther.

"Helllooo, Beautiful," he replied, grinning. The partially clothed Doctor then walked over to her and the tank that the coral was held in and looked down in it. He wrapped his arm around Rose's waist and said, "So, we had 5.251 cubic centimeters of growth in just a few seconds, huh?"

"Oh, so you can still work the maths!" the Time Lord exclaimed.

"A loomling could work that equation," he replied derisively.

Rose just shook her head, pulled from the Doctor who held her, and walked out of the room, sipping her coffee. She went to the galley and poured herself a bowl of cereal. Both of them walked in behind her a minute later, acting suspiciously in sync.

"Are you two done taking shots at one another now?" she asked calmly, pleased that they had stopped for the moment.

After a quick breakfast, she left them bantering with each other while she went to get ready for the day.

Half an hour later, she stepped out of the shower, dried and brushed her hair, and began applying her makeup. She favored much less now than she used to, and it made her look a few years older than she did without it. She left off the lipstick this time, only applying a small amount of vanilla flavored chap-stick.

She found some dark blue jeans and a dark pink T shirt and put them on, then walked over to the Doctor's room, where she was told they'd be waiting for her. Her nervousness from the night before returned as she stepped through the door.

She stepped inside and saw the Doctor in brown sitting comfortably in the plush, wing-back chair in the corner of the room. The other Doctor sat on the bed by the headboard with one leg hanging off. He'd also gotten dressed for the day, wearing a maroon oxford and no tie. Despite his calm, almost cocky exterior, she could feel that he was also nervous.

She strode across the room to the bed, kicked off the Chucks she had donned to walk the grated halls, and sat on the bed cross-legged like she had the night before. The Doctor gave her a half grin and took his position in front of her.

"You ready for this?" he asked softly and took her hands.

"Yeah," she replied. "Just tell me what to do."

"Just mirror what I do and we'll be fine," he assured her.

The Doctor put his fingers to her temples and closed his eyes as Rose did the same. She felt him at the edge of her consciousness, and welcomed him in. The same time he stepped into her mind, she stepped into his.

It was an odd sensation. Just like when she had bonded with the other Doctor, she could feel and sense everything the Doctor felt, his heart beating, the way her skin felt under his fingertips, everything. Then came the moment where she couldn't tell whether she was the Doctor, or Rose. During it, she caught a handful of memories: Running hand in hand across a bridge; what looked like a crystal ball that had dark shapes swirling inside; a blank, white wall; pushing a lever with another pair of hands on top of his, and being terrified and sickened at what he was doing; carrying a sack with a box in it across a desert to a shed.

Finally, the moment ended where she didn't know who she was, and her identity separated back into itself. She felt disoriented and a bit dizzy. She felt the bed shift as the other Doctor crawled into the bed behind her. He put his legs to either side and hugged her from behind.

"Are you okay?" she heard both from behind her and in her mind.

"Yeah. Jus' got a bit dizzy for a mo'," she assured them. The muddiness and vertigo had passed quickly.

They both pulled back from one another's minds, removed their hands from each other's heads, and opened their eyes. The Doctor then took Rose's hand in a test. At skin contact, she felt the need that she had felt every time the man sitting behind her had touched her for most of the past two weeks. They both gave into it immediately.

The Doctor wearing blue gave a chuckle. "That's amazing," he happily said.

"I know," the Doctor behind her agreed. He pushed some of her hair behind her ear and kissed her just under it.

The man in front of her leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers softly. His kiss turned deep quickly, and he pulled her onto his lap, despite the light noise of protest from the man behind her. His hands moved from her arms, around her back, to her bum, and he gave it a squeeze. Rose giggled against his mouth and pushed his jacket off him, tossing it off somewhere. The Doctor behind her pushed her shirt up with one hand and rubbed her stomach while he left a trail of kisses and little bites along the back of her neck.

The Doctor she sat on ran his hands up her thighs, over her back, up and over her shoulders. He cupped her breast and pinched a nipple through her shirt. She ground against his length, eliciting a deep groan from him. He broke away from her mouth and gazed into her eyes, his brown orbs full of lust. At the same time, she reached for the buttons of his shirt as he reached for the button on her jeans. As she undid the buttons of his shirt, she turned her head and met the lips of the Time Lord behind her.

As she kissed him, the Doctor grabbed the hem of her t shirt and pulled it up, exposing her breasts to the ministrations of the other Doctor. He played with one hardened nipple as the other man lapped and sucked on the opposite. She had a hand threaded in each Doctor's hair, until the full Time Lord pulled back and finished the removal of her top.

The Doctor that she straddled released her breast with a pop and grinned at her. He got up on his knees, bringing her up with him, leaned her back against the other man, and shuffled backwards, so that she was mostly laying on the bed, with her upper body pillowed against the brown suited Doctor.

Rose reached up and began undoing the fully clothed man's tie as he shrugged out of his jacket. She had it almost unknotted when the other man grabbed the waistband of her jeans and started to pull them off of her. She stopped what she was doing to watch and he watched her watching him.

When her jeans were flung off the bed, he climbed up her body and kissed her possessively. He then slowly moved, leaving a trail of kisses from her mouth, to her jaw, down her throat. He laved at her breasts, then moved down her stomach, dipping his tongue into her navel as he passed by. He stopped just above her knickers.

She groaned in frustration, and he chuckled darkly. The Doctor she was leaned up against said, "Patience, my Rose."

Rose looked up at him and noticed that his eyes had turned a darker shade of brown. He had finished taking off his tie, and had unbuttoned his shirt, except for the bottom buttons that she had her head on.

The part human Doctor took hold of her knickers and slid the piece of fabric off her body. He slowly ran his hands up her legs. When he got to her knees, he spread them apart, opening her to his gaze. He then leaned down and ran his talented tongue from her knees up her thigh. When he got to her dark curls, he spread her legs wider and placed a kiss at her most intimate spot.

She sighed and reached down to touch his hair, but the Doctor behind her grabbed her hands before she could. As the part human Doctor lapped at her, the full Gallifreyan pulled back and let Rose lay down flat on the bed. He took her hands and held them down on either side of her head and leaned down and kissed her sweetly.

The part human moved away from her and got up off the bed. He quickly shucked his trousers, then climbed back in bed and situated himself between her knees. The Doctor pulled away from her and let his counterpart at her while he removed the rest of his clothing.

The Doctor with one heart brought his forehead to her and whispered that he loved her. He then brought his lips to hers and slid himself into her as far as it could go in that position. He moaned into her mouth as he did so, and stilled for a moment so she could adjust.

She could feel everything he felt, and she knew that the reverse was true as well. It was something they had done before, but they'd never taken it so far, not with this Doctor anyway. The feeling was amazing.

The Time Lord climbed into bed next to them, and laid out alongside Rose. He ran his hand over her stomach and initiated their link as well, but in a different way than the part human Doctor was utilizing their bond. He ran his fingertips over her skin, making it tingle wherever he touched her.

The Doctor within her started moving, and a moment later, he sat upright and shifted them so that his entire length buried inside her. Her legs were held in the air by his arms, and he started watching himself move in and out of her.

The Time Lord's hand kept running all over her body, tracing long lines from her head, all the way down as far as he could reach and back again. He made circuits of her breasts, teasing the hardened nipples until they were almost sore before moving on.

The combination of sensations from both men had her writhing and making needy noises in moments. When the Time Lord reached his hand down to where she was joined with the other Doctor, she came in seconds. They rode and rubbed her through her orgasm and brought her down slowly.

The men shared a look, and the part human pulled out of her, left the bed, and walked around it to the foot, where her head was closest to the edge. The Doctor with two hearts had her roll over and get up on her hand and knees. He then stuck a couple of fingers inside of her and slowly moved them around.

The man she had just bonded with stood in front of her, smiling down on her. His erection bobbed a bit and Rose reached out a hand to caress its length. He rewarded her with a moan, then climbed up on the bed and situated himself on his knees so she could reach to do what she wanted to do. She held his cock around the back and took it in her mouth. He hissed at the contact, and through their newly formed bond, she could feel how good her hot and wet mouth felt wrapped around him.

The other Doctor kneaded her bum with one hand while he pumped at her with his other. Every now and then, his fingers would leave her for a moment, and she knew he was sucking her juices from them.

She sucked and fondled the part human Doctor, who had dropped all bits of the English language from his vocabulary except for her name. His hands had threaded through her hair, and she could tell he fought to keep from thrusting into her mouth. It didn't take very long before he grunted and came in her mouth, shouting her name and some musical sounding syllables that shouldn't be able to come out of the throat of anyone with human DNA. She swallowed him down, happily. When he pulled himself from her mouth and sat down, he was breathing heavily and chuckling. She pillowed her head on his thigh and smiled up at him. He brushed her hair back from her face in a gentle caress. She felt his euphoria, and returned it.

That's when the other Doctor's fingers slid from within her, and she felt the head of him poke against her opening. She moaned as he entered her slowly. He immediately pulled almost all the way out, then slammed back in. One of his hands was on her lower back, pushing down a little, and the other one caressed the flesh of her bum.

The part human reached forward suddenly and gave her bum a little swat that had her squeal and jump, then laugh.

"Oh, you like that, do you?" he asked with a knowing grin.

In retaliation, she reached behind him and gave his bum a little swat as well. He jumped some and gave her his half grin that held promises of things to come.

All rational thought ceased as the Time Lord began moving just a bit faster than a human was capable of. She grunted and moaned, cussed and cried out. After she came, he slowed down, then stopped moving altogether.

"We want to try something," the Doctor who's thigh she was using as a pillow said. She looked up at him quizzically.

"It's not something we've ever come close to doing before," the Doctor buried in her added.

"And, as always, you've got the option of saying 'no,'" the part human finished.

"What?" she asked. She was both intrigued, and a little bit frightened.

"We want to take you, at the same time," the human Doctor said.

"One of us in here," the Time Lord told her, thrusting for emphasis, "and the other one here." He ran his thumb over her other hole.

"I-I've never," she stuttered. No one had ever gone there before, and the Doctors were rather well endowed. Shireen said it had hurt like hell and she wasn't doing that again.

"We know. It's okay," the Time Lord assured her. "We've got other things you can try first, to see if it's something you'd like." He left her and leaned back, to grab something out of the bed-stand. Rose rolled on her side to see what he brought out. He dumped the plastic shopping bag out on the bed, and Rose could see that it held a variety of sex toys of different shapes, sizes, and materials. There was also a bottle of lubrication in the bag.

"I didn't know what you'd like, so I got a variety," the Doctor at the foot of the bed explained.

"I looked into this after you suggested it," the other Doctor told his counterpart. "You're supposed to start with the smallest thing you can find, usually a finger, take it slowly, and use a lot of lubrication. Vaginal and other stimulation should also help," he lectured. He held up the tube and peered at it. "Oh, good, you got the gel," he exclaimed happily.

They talked back and forth like that for a minute, and Rose giggled. They were both naked. The Time Lord was hard as a rock and would stay that way until he decided he was done (that had been a pleasant surprise). And they were discussing sex toys and vaginal stimulation almost clinically.

They both turned their heads toward her and gave her identical winks. The part human Doctor held up a small toy and asked, "So, what do you think? Wanna give it a try?" He looked hopeful, like he was really anticipating doing this.

She looked at the small toy and asked, "Will it hurt?"

"Nah," he answered immediately. "Weelll, it might," he amended. "If you're not relaxed, but we'll make sure you're relaxed. This is supposed to be a pleasurable experience."

"If you feel any pain, we need to know immediately," the other Doctor interjected. "Which we will, because we'll be able to feel everything you can feel."

Her eyes moved back and forth between them. They'd had a discussion about doing this beforehand, and even planned for it. That was sweet. She trusted them to make this feel good. Rose made her decision.

"Okay," she agreed. Both Doctors grinned at her, and the part human swooped down on her and gave her a bruising kiss.

"Which one?" she wondered.

"None of them, yet," The Time Lord answered. "First, we make you scream our chosen names." The grin he gave her was positively filthy. How had she ever believed this man was asexual?

They laid her on her side, with her knee on the part human Doctor, who laid beside her. He kissed her sweetly as she felt the other man slide inside her. A few strokes, and her fire had been stoked again. He was gentler this time, moving slower within her. The man in front of her kept his lips to hers as his hands roamed her body until he got to the space between her legs. He touched her, rubbing circles on her nub, causing her to pant and dig her nails into him. At the same time, both of them sped up, and she shattered, calling out, "Doctor!" followed by a few obscenities.

"Language," the Time Lord admonished in an amused voice.

"Cursing in four different languages during orgasm. _And_ you used the terms right. That's rather impressive," the part human marveled.

"I've got a collection of alien curses," she replied, laughing.

"She's far too coherent, we've not done enough," the Time Lord declared. He then moved a bit and she heard what could only be the cap of the lube opening and closing. A blob of gel fell on her bum suddenly, and she tensed a little at how cold it was.

"Relax," the other Doctor whispered. He kissed her again, an activity she was sure she could do all day, every day, and ran his free hand over her body.

She felt the Doctor at her other end rub the opening he wasn't currently occupying for a moment, then the tip of his finger slipped in just a little. He stopped then, and checked on her mentally. It felt weird, but didn't hurt, so she sent back reassurance and an invitation to continue. He very slowly pushed the rest of his finger in, and checked on her again. At her okay, he started moving the finger and himself in her at the same time, slowly at first, then faster.

While he did this, Rose and the part human Doctor made out with one another, all teeth and lips and hands. Rose found herself pushing back as the Doctor thrust into her. When that happened, both men stopped and gave little chuckles.

"I do believe Rose likes that," the Time Lord remarked.

"I think you're right," the part human agreed.

"Naturally," his counterpart preened.

With an eyeroll, the part human turned to Rose. "What do you think, ready to graduate up a size?"

"Yeah, let's do it," Rose replied breathlessly, more confident this time.

The Doctor left her body and ran his eyes over the pile of toys. He chose one of the medium sized ones and looked it over carefully. Satisfied with what he saw, he crawled back to her, lubed the toy up, and entered Rose again.

"Same way. Okay?" he asked.

At Rose's assent, the Doctor she had just bonded with claimed her mouth again, and she was entered, the same way as before. She felt so full, and when the Doctor thrusted in her this time, she tipped over into orgasm. The Time Lord came with her. His fingers dug into her thigh as he pulsed into her.

"Oh, she _really_ likes that," the part human crooned, his voice full of lust. His refractory period was over, and he had started to become hard again.

"Gimme a mo'," the Time Lord said in a thick, stunned voice as he got up. Rose noticed that his eyes had gone even darker. He kissed her hard and disappeared into the en suite to clean up a little.

The other Doctor got up and grabbed a couple of tissues from the bedstand and gave them to her to wipe off while he picked up the unused toys and put them back in the bag to get them out of the way.

Rose slid off the bed and walked over to the Doctor who was still in the room. She didn't know what she was going to say or do. When she made skin contact with him, their new bond flared up and the Doctor spun around, wrapping his arms around her. He put his forehead to hers, and they both reveled in their new, stronger connection.

She felt him pressing against her belly, and pushed him down so that he sat on the edge of the bed. She slowly got down on her knees, watching his eyes get wider as he realized what she was about to do. When she got down on her knees, she took him in her mouth, licking, sucking, and rubbing his length. His hands threaded through her hair as he moaned her name.

The other Doctor came out of the en suite and watched them for a minute. "Having fun?" he asked.

"Oh, yesss," the part human moaned. He whimpered a little when Rose pulled back, and she grinned at him for it.

They had her grab the lube that had made it to the foot of the bed, and when she turned back, one of them had gotten on the bed, leaning against the headboard. The other encouraged her to go have her way with him, so she crawled up, kissed the man, and impaled herself on him.

The other Doctor came up behind her, kissing her back up to her neck. She felt the head of him press against her and leaned forward so he'd have better access. He entered her very slowly, with one hand reached around her, rubbing her nub.

Finally, he was in all the way, only having had to stop once so Rose could adjust. They had her move like she was just with the one man at first. The other Doctor moved with her, then he slowly started moving against her as she gained confidence.

The pressure between them, massaging her spot from both sides, had Rose in euphoria. The links between the three of them were being utilized to their fullest, and her Doctors shared the incredible sensations. All three of them found themselves crashing through a tidal wave of pleasure that none had ever imagined possible.

When it was all over, she laid there in the middle of the bed, breathing heavily and shaking a bit, a Doctor on either side of her in much the same state. Both of them were touching her, their links between one another wide open, and she'd forgotten which one was which. A quick check of pulse or a thought would sort that out, but it didn't matter.

Damn, the things they could do when they worked together.

When her heart calmed down, she drifted off into a light sleep.


	9. Peek At The Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonds Chapter 9: Peek at the Future
> 
> A/n: Finally! After wrestling with this chapter for weeks, I finally have finished Bonds! The next installment of this series is The Next Doctor? which follows a week after the events here.
> 
> Shouting out to my great beta, Hawkerin!

 

The Doctor watched Rose sleeping, something he rarely got to see anymore. He ran his eyes over her, taking in her curves, and the way her breasts rose and fell as she breathed.

Their newly set bond blazed happily at the back of his mind. He was still in a euphoria over it. Was this how his other self felt? Damn. No wonder he was consistently in a good mood over the last couple weeks.

She groaned and shifted a little, then sat up straight and looked around her, a little panicked for a second. When her eyes found him, they calmed and she gave him a shy smile. He returned that smile immediately, amused that she was feeling a bit shy, especially after what they had just done and the fact that she was completely naked.

"Have a nice kip?" he asked.

"Mmm, good," she slurred. She rubbed her eyes and asked, "How long was I out?"

"About 46 minutes," he answered, knowing that she wouldn't care about the more precise answer.

"Can't believe I fell asleep," Rose said.

"If it helps, so did I, for about 37 minutes," he replied.

Rose flopped back on the bed beside him, and he wrapped an arm around her. As soon as they touched, their bond flared up and they both let out a little sigh and scooted closer so that there was more contact with one another. Everywhere they touched, a slight tingling could be felt, and he reveled in it.

Even though their bond wasn't set the same as her link with the other Doctor, and they had been together only an hour before, he still felt himself hardening. In response, Rose became aroused too. He could smell it over the scent of recent sex and feel it through their bond. He pressed his lips to hers softly, and after only a couple seconds, their kiss turned heated and she pulled away.

"I need a shower," she gasped out.

"So do I," he murmured from the crook of her neck, between kisses. A rather pleasant idea sprung to mind. "So let's go take one." He got out of the bed and held his hand out to her.

After she took his hand with a grin, the two of them stepped into the rather large shower, and he popped open the bottle of shampoo that had migrated from Rose's shower to this one. He lathered up her hair and washed it, feeling how much pleasure she felt at having that done for her through their link. After rinsing her hair, she returned the favor, running her fingers through his locks.

The two of them gently washed each other, moving down slowly, until Rose took him in her mouth. Immediately, he gasped at the contact and slammed his hand against the wall to steady himself. His other hand went to the back of her head and into her hair.

"Oh, fuck," he groaned. After a few more swipes of her tongue, he pulled away from her and got her to stand up. He kissed the lips that had just been wrapped around his length and pushed her up against the wall before he lifted her up.

He slid inside her, eliciting a moan. Blimey, she was warm inside. A stray thought came to him for the first time; if she was this warm to him, how hot was she to his double?

They shifted a bit so that he was more comfortable and she was more secure. He'd never been gladder to have the rough patches on the floor of the shower that helped keep him from sliding around.

This was even better than the little garden where they were a few days before. This time, they were both completely naked, and there was water running over them. Droplets ran over her skin, and he wanted to lick them up.

The Doctor looked into her eyes as he began moving, but couldn't keep the contact long. This felt incredible, and he buried his face into her neck, nipping at her pulse point. He could feel bits of what she felt through their link, and he sensed her wanting more at the edge of his consciousness. He could deny Rose nothing, even if he wanted to, which he didn't, so he opened their bond fully.

Instantly, he felt the sensations she was feeling almost as if he were feeling them himself. She felt as if she were falling, but safe. Pleasure shot through the both of them, and his knees almost buckled at it. He knew the same was true for her; that she could feel everything he felt.

It was over quickly after that. She squeezed him tightly as his seed pulsed into her. They stayed where they were for a moment, with her wrapped around him, and him holding her up on him, kissing each other languidly. Finally, the Doctor couldn't hold her up there any longer, and there wasn't really a reason to stay like that anymore.

"Aw, now you've made me all dirty again," Rose told him with a grin once she stood firmly on the floor.

"Complaining?" he asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Absolutely not," she replied, grinning with her talented little pink tongue sticking out. They giggled and finished their shower.

XxXxXxXx

Rose stepped out of the TARDIS and looked into the valley that stood below, waiting for the usual time and place lecture from one, or both of the Doctors. The place was beautiful. From their vantage point, Rose could see that the land laid in gently rolling hills. The area was covered in large, ancient trees. It was hot out, but not unbearably so. Rose surmised that it must be Summer.

The door of the TARDIS closed behind her, and one of the Doctors said, "We're on Earth, just before humans came back to it after having to leave in the 29th century."

"We're in Napa Valley," came the other Doctor's voice from a different direction. "This is a relatively safe place," he told her. "I want to see what we can do."

"You mean, you don't know?" Rose asked, with a glance at the Time Lord, who'd been silent so far.

"We've never put this to a test," the Time Lord answered.

"Even if you had, every link is different. There's different ways they were set, differing abilities-"

"Like, for example, he's a bit weaker in the telepathic area than I am," the Doctor in brown interrupted.

"Or how this idiot over here couldn't control himself and now has to live with a bond with a very, very strong sexual component for the rest of his days," the part human Doctor retorted with a glare pointed at his counterpart.

"I do not have to live with a bond like this for the 'rest of my days'," the Doctor scoffed. He put his hands in his pockets and started down the game trail. Rose's deep seated insecurities stirred again, but before they could really come out, the other Doctor grabbed her hand, and she felt reassurance from him as he gave a 'really?' look to his counterpart.

"It's not exactly unbreakable now, is it? So every day, every second is a choice. I think that's worth a lot more than _having_ to live with it for the rest of my days," the Doctor continued babbling as he stepped down.

"Nice save," the part human next to her muttered in a very low voice. He let go of her hand and put it on her back, guiding her.

Keen to change the subject, Rose asked a question that had been on her mind since they'd arrived, "Wait, you said we were in Napa Valley?"

"Yep," the part human answered.

"I thought Napa Valley was all fields and grapes and the like," Rose wondered.

"It's been ten thousand years. Over time, the land reclaimed itself," the Time Lord told her from up ahead.

"There may still be some grapes growing wild, though," the Doctor in blue said. "I doubt it. It got pretty hot, but there may be."

"'S beautiful just like this," Rose said.

"Yeah, it is," he replied. "Oh, he's in a hurry, isn't he?"

"Apparently," Rose answered. The two of them hurried to catch up to the rapidly disappearing brown trench coat.

XxXx

Half an hour later, Rose was alone in the woods, wandering the deer trails, and waiting for the signal from the Doctors. She was certain that one of them, at least, could see her, or was close enough to her so that they could get to her quickly. She didn't know where they were, though. She knew she could find one of them if she needed to. The ability to zone in on one of them like a homing pigeon had been demonstrated to its fullest a week before.

Rose wasn't worried, though. She felt a strange sort of calm while wandering the ancient forest. She had been apprehensive at first at being alone in the woods. She was a city girl after all, and even her travels with the Doctor and on her own hadn't brought her into deep woods much. After a few minutes, all of her misgivings gave way when she realized that the forest floor was open.

The ancient trees made it hard for much to grow below, and there weren't that many places where something that could hurt her could hide, and most of what could hurt her, wasn't deadly. Not to her at least.

After her realization, she remembered that she was supposed to be keeping her mind open to the Doctors at the start of this. She stilled and made sure that she could hear them.

" _Rose_ _?_ _"_ the part human Doctor said in her mind a few seconds later. _"Can you hear me?"_

" _Yes, I can,"_ she replied.

" _And me?"_ the other Doctor asked.

" _Yep."_

" _And now?"_ both asked together.

" _That sounds like an echo,"_ she told them. _"It's odd."_

" _Now you know how you sound to us,"_ the part human commented. She knew that her mind had an echo. The best theory for why her mental voice did that was her time as Bad Wolf. She'd had an echo then too.

" _Rose, did you hear me the second time?"_ the Gallifreyan asked.

" _Yes. I'm guessing you didn't hear my reply about the echo? I tried to send it to both of you,"_ she let him know.

" _No, I didn't. Okay, you can hear both of us, that's good. Try sending something to both of us again,"_ he told her.

She looked around quickly for inspiration, when she noticed movement not to far to her left. _"Can either of you see me?"_ Rose questioned. In answer, she received twin negatives.

" _We needed distance for this. Why?"_ the Doctor with one heart asked.

" _Okay, I got that. Good job. And no, I can't see you. What makes you ask that?"_ the other Doctor asked.

" _I just saw something big move,"_ Rose told them both. _"I dunno, maybe it's a trick of the light?"_

" _We're on the way. What did it look like?"_ one of the Doctors said, or maybe each sentence was a different Doctor. She didn't know, because she saw it again and wasn't paying attention.

" _I just saw it again. Definitely not a shadow. Looks like a person,"_ Rose replied. _"I thought Earth was uninhabited at this time?"_

" _There is a nearly ten thousand year stretch where it's supposed to be uninhabited by sentient beings,"_ the part human replied.

" _Of course, that doesn't mean that another species hasn't come in and settled here in the meantime,"_ the other Doctor added. _"What kind of person?"_

" _Two arms, two legs, one head, tall and thin. Beyond that, it's hard to tell in this light,"_ Rose answered as she watched the being get closer.

"Hello?" she called out. "I see you there. It's okay, I'm not here to-oh!" suddenly, she felt hands on her. Not one of the Doctors; these were scaly. Whoever it was, was telepathic. She could feel it at their touch. She felt a prick in her neck and desperately thought, _"There's more than one, they're reptiles, and telepa-"_ Then she knew no more.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctors were making their way towards Rose, just in case what she saw was something. When she saw it again, she described what she saw.

" _There's more than one, they're reptiles, and telepa-"_ Rose's mental voice cut off suddenly, chilling the Doctors. They both ran to where they knew Rose was.

"Telepathic reptiles," the part human gasped out. "I wish we had gotten an image!"

"Telepathic reptiles on Earth," the Time Lord thought out loud as they ran.

"In this part of the galaxy," continued the Doctor in blue.

"Could it be?"

They arrived at the place they had known Rose to be before, and saw some scuffing, but not much. Whatever happened must have been quick. Immediately, they both smelled a distinctive tang in the air. It was faint, but they were able to scan the source to confirm.

It was some of Rose's blood.

Both of them instantly started scanning for sources of huon energy.

XxXxXxXx

Rose woke in a dark, metal room. She laid on a hard mattress that wasn't much better than the floor would have been. There was a bad taste in her mouth, and she smacked her tongue against the roof of it in an effort to be rid of it. She checked herself over quickly and found a small cut on her arm. From its shape, it was probably from a thorn. There was a dried line of red coming from it. It must have bled quite a bit.

She wasn't chained, tied up, or otherwise incapacitated, so she decided to stand up and explore the cell she was in. That decision turned out to be a mistake. The room spun horribly, and she dropped back down to the mattress in an effort to keep from falling and cracking her head, or losing her breakfast. Whatever they had given her was strong.

She tried to remember how she got there. The Doctors would be freaking-

The Doctors!

They'd been practicing how they could use their bonds to their fullest when she'd been taken. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, but her head swam too much for that. She laid back down to combat the dizziness, and thought _"Doctor? They've got me. I'm okay, but I was drugged."_

Being upright had been the only thing keeping whatever was in her system from making her go back to sleep. She passed out again after trying to send the message.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctors were headed, far too slowly for their tastes, down a trail they had detected. Along the way, there were tiny drops of Rose's blood, giving off energy signals that made the sonics unable to zero in on the source of that energy. Each drop had them more angry.

Suddenly, they could feel Rose's presence through their links.

" _Doctor..._ _they've_ _got me...I'm okay...but I was drugged,"_ the Doctor in brown heard before her presence faded out again.

"She was drugged?" he asked no one in particular.

"She got a message through to you?" his counterpart queried. The Time Lord grabbed his hand, so nothing could be distorted and relayed the message he heard. "Right. Used her moment of consciousness to make sure we knew she was okay," he commented with a small, grim smile and shook his head.

"We need to try to figure out what she's been dosed with," the dual-hearted Doctor said. The message had allayed some fears, but brought new ones to light. If she was dosed with the wrong thing it could be deadly.

"Whatever it is, I don't like the effect it's having on her," his double observed, clearly worried just as much as he was.

They followed the trail until they came to a clearing. In the clearing, there were obvious signs of a vehicle having been there. They could find no other signs of Rose's blood. She'd obviously been in it when it left. Its presence explained why the sonic couldn't pick up the readings directly from Rose. She was too far away, and not exposed.

"Shit!" his blue suited counterpart exclaimed. He ran his hands through his hair and repeated the expletive several times, mixed in with several more like it. The Doctor knew that if he had something to kick, it would have been kicked repeatedly.

For his part, he just stood there, fists clenched and thinking furiously. He then turned back to where they came from and yelled, "Come on!" as he stalked away from the clearing.

"Oh!" he heard, as his other self jogged to catch up to him.

He broke out in a run and took the fastest path back to the TARDIS. They'd traveled a long way from it. He burst through the doors and went straight to the console to run the scans that the TARDIS could do better than his sonic. As soon as he went in, he felt the TARDIS's worry.

When the other Doctor got there, breathing a little hard, he burst through the doors and shut them. The blue suited man was gasping for breath as he made his way up to the console and came around to where the scanner was.

The Doctor finished setting it up, and turned to his counterpart, who was having difficulty breathing properly. He put his hands on his counterpart's arms and guided him to sit down on the jump seat. He resisted at first, but relented.

"Breathe," he told his twin, worried for him. He received a dirty look from the gasping man.

He tapped into their link to figure out what was wrong with his double. What he found was panic. A lot of it was the same feeling he had regarding Rose, but stronger. This was to be expected in someone who had just had their bondmate of 3 hours, 52 minutes, and 38 seconds kidnapped. But, shockingly, even more of it was panic from being extremely out of breath. He felt helpless, like he couldn't control himself. It created an involuntary reaction, making it harder for him to breathe, which just made the panic worse, and could spiral out of control.

"We need to-" he started, trying to pull away. "She needs-" He couldn't get a sentence finished. "And I can't-" He held his hand on his chest and grimaced.

"You're not going anywhere. Stay here and breathe," he ordered.

"But-"

"Doctor, shut up and breathe!" he snapped. That shocked his double, and he grimaced. That was probably not good for the other man in retrospect. The only time he'd ever called his other self by their shared chosen name before, was when they were in Egypt.

He got in front of his double and held his shoulders. If the Time Lord Doctor weren't so worked up himself, he could get the part human Doctor to calm down with their telepathy. Right now, that approach would only make this worse, so he had to do this some other way.

"Focus on my voice, nothing else," he calmly spoke. He grabbed the other man's hand and put it on his own chest. "Breathe in and out with me." He made exaggerated breathing motions for the other man to follow, and then slowed them down as the other man became able to match his breath.

"That's it, deep breaths," he said, rubbing the other man's back. The part human's breathing became less panicked and laboured.

"What the hell was that?" the part human man asked once he could get a whole sentence out again.

"I think that was a panic attack," the Time Lord replied. "Or you were getting close to having one. I've never had one. We've seen it before, though."

"No, we don't get panic attacks," he denied. Still a little breathless. "None of us, ever."

"It's a physical reaction to emotional and physical stimuli," the Doctor in brown told his twin. "Your very new bondmate was just taken, and you were in a physical position you've never been in before," he reasoned. "Just relax for a minute, and you'll be okay."

The other Doctor groaned in frustration, then suddenly punched the seat beside him. "Isn't that just fuckin' wizard. Stupid, weak body-"

"Calm down while you've got the chance. Rose needs you," the Doctor reminded his part human twin as he went to check on the scan. It dinged just as he was about to reach the screen. "Okay, Rose, where are you?" he asked, as the information popped up.

Immediately, he started putting in the spacial coordinates to where Rose could be found and ran around the console.

XxXxXxXx

Rose woke up again, alert this time. The first thing she noticed was the outline of a person, backlit by the open door. There were ridges on its head, and-was that an injector?

She jumped up, ready to tackle the being, take the injector with whatever might be in it, and escape. A low growl issued from her throat as she lurched. The being hissed back, and pushed her down easily. It wasn't incredibly strong, but Rose had been in the less advantageous position.

"What'd you give me?" she asked when she noticed that the injector was already empty.

"You speak Silurian?" it asked in shock.

"Yes," Rose simply replied, not wanting to say that really, she didn't speak anything but English, but she had a translator that could be miles away. "You're Silurian? What did you give me?" she repeated her question as she tried to contact her Doctors. She was grateful for the extra learning from the one that always wore blue that allowed her to hold a basic conversation in her head without anyone physically there being aware of it. This time, she decided to just relay what was happening, so they'd know.

"It is merely a countering agent to the venom." The being stood upright and hit something on the wall just on the other side of the door. The sudden light in the room blinded Rose for a moment, despite it not being really bright. Relief flowed through her, both through her bonds and from being told that the injector held a countering agent to a toxin.

"You are not one of the apes, though you look like one and share similarities," it commented. Okay, so these people could tell she wasn't human. That sort of scared her, even the Doctor hadn't been able to tell. Of course, while she was out, they could have done a scan.

When her eyes adjusted she got a good look at the Silurian. It had green, scaly looking skin and ridges on the tops and sides of its head. Its eyes, nose, and mouth looked human, except for being green. The facial features seemed female, as did its voice. There was no hair to be seen, but that was to be expected with a lizard woman.

"No, I'm not fully human," Rose admitted. "What's your name?" she asked suddenly, in an attempt to 'make friends.'

"Valana," she replied.

"I'm Rose, Rose Tyler," she introduced herself. The woman's face was the picture of shock. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth popped open a little bit. She backed the rest of the way out of the door and it shut, leaving Rose locked in.

That wasn't good. She felt the worry from her Doctors.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctors landed the TARDIS in a dark hallway and stepped outside. Their links to Rose became stronger a couple of seconds later, indicating that she was conscious again which took a bit of the edge off their anger.

They made their way down the corridor, getting almost to the end of it before they were cut off by several lizard people wearing masks. They held weapons trained on the two men.

"I'm the Doctor, and you have someone very important to me," the Doctor with two hearts said in a deadly calm voice.

"Give her back," the other Doctor commanded, barely concealing his rage.

One of the Silurian warriors stepped forward. "You will remain here," it, a female, judging from the way she sounded, was shaped, and the fact that she was a soldier in a female dominant society, told them before she left. The rest of the group stayed behind, weapons trained on the Doctors.

Just before the Silurians appeared, both Doctors started getting a relay of what was happening around Rose. It stuttered. Sometimes both got it, and sometimes only one got it- not always the same one. At the end of the short conversation, they heard Rose get a name out of the woman and introduce herself. Her reaction to Rose's name had them all worried.

The warrior who left returned with an older man dressed in Robes. "Hello, Doctor," he greeted the Doctor in blue pleasantly. "And Doctor," he nodded at the Doctor in brown. "I am Meelark. It is an honor to have you here."

"Where's Rose, and why have you taken her?" the part human asked in a low voice before the other one could get to it.

"The female we found in the woods is Rose Tyler?" Meelark asked, genuinely surprised

"Yes," the Time Lord replied quickly, shocked.

"She was caught on our lands. We were protecting ourselves. The woman will be released immediately," the male Silurian informed them before the Doctor in brown could get his next question out. He sent the order with a nod at the soldier that had brought him. "Come with me," he beckoned the Doctors.

As the Doctors followed Meelark into another room, the part human Doctor asked, "How do you know that name?" The Silurian man knowing Rose's identity shocked most of the anger out of them for a moment, but made them both even more on guard.

"The three of you came to our people long ago," Meelark told them. "To our ancestors in another land. We cannot tell you much; not when or where or what happened there."

They entered a huge, yet functional room. It looked almost organic in appearance at first sight, but upon closer inspection, it was metal with stone. Vines grew everywhere, adding to the organic atmosphere. A large table stood in the middle of the room, with a few chairs around it. The tabletop appeared to be made of one large piece of wood, from an old growth tree. Two of the edges were the outermost layer of the tree, with the bark still attached.

"The Timelines, you know," Meelark continued his explanation. "We were told that what happened must be allowed to happen in its own time, so that it does not become fixed." He gestured to the table and added, "Please sit down while we wait for your bonded mate. There is much to be discussed." He then turned and left the twin Time Lords alone.

As soon as the Silurian man left the room, which didn't have a door, they looked at each other in bemusement. "Well, always nice to know we have a future," the part human said.

Both men decided to contact Rose at the same time.

XxXxXxXx

Rose paced the floor of the small cell until the door slid open. Valana stepped just in the doorway. Rose fixed her eyes on the Silurian, trying to gauge the situation by taking in her body language. The races of the universe may handle things differently, but the vast majority of humanoid races- those with two arms, two legs, and one head- had amazingly similar body language.

Valana stood there, obviously tensed for anything Rose might do. Attacking her immediately had been a stupid move before. Now the Silurian was more on guard. But Rose's weak attack didn't account for what she saw now. Valana looked like she was ready for a real fight, with someone who knew how to.

"Forgive me, Madam Wolf, we did not know who you were. Come with me," she ordered

Rose stayed where she was with her eyes locked on the woman and her arms down at her sides. She tried to look non threatening while being ready for anything the lizard woman might do. The woman knew who she was, had been shocked when she heard her name, and now came back to her with the other, far less known name name that she had chosen for herself.

"How do you know that name?" she demanded.

"My ancestors have met you. The story was passed on through generations." She looked to be in awe. Maybe surprised that the stories she had heard were real. "It is said that-"

"Sister," another voice behind her warned. "Remember the Timelines."

"Meelark will explain everything to you. Follow." Valana turned and walked out of sight, leaving the door open.

Rose approached the opening cautiously and stepped outside. The sisters were waiting for her. She had no desire to stay behind and a lot of curiosity, so she followed them. The corridors became brighter as she went, and started to look more polished. They were coming up on an open door with an amber light spilling from it when she suddenly heard both Doctors clear as day in her mind, querying her.

" _I think I'm being taken to wherever you are. You're close, aren't you? I think you are,"_ she replied to them both.

They walked into the room with the amber light spilling out, and she saw both of the Doctors there. "You are!" she called out loud and rushed toward the suited men without thinking. She wrapped her arms around both of their necks, and each one was able to get one arm around her and bury their face in her neck.

"Are you okay?" they both asked at the same time, in a low voice.

"I'm good," Rose told them. "Much better now."

"You have got to stop scaring us like that," one of them said into her ear.

"Yeah, you gave him a panic attack," the other one joked.

"Oi! She didn't give me a panic attack," the first one whispered indignantly. Rose felt him lightly kick his other self.

"Be nice to each other," Rose chided them, not sure if a panic attack happened or not. She pulled back and shook her head, ready to receive the kisses she knew were coming. Both men's gazes were on a spot behind her, though. She turned around and saw what appeared to be an older Silurian, dressed in robes.

"Rose, meet Meelark. One of the members of the council of elders," one of the Doctors said behind her.

"Hello, Bad Wolf, it's a pleasure to meet you," the Silurian said pleasantly. She felt the Doctors stiffen behind her.

"Um, hello," she said unsurely. "Why did you greet me like that?"

"It is your name, is it not? Your chosen name?" he asked.

"Um, yeah," she admitted. "But you can call me Rose."

"Very well then," he said pleasantly. "Rose, Doctor, and Doctor, please, have a seat." He walked around to one end of the table and sat. Following his lead, the time travelers stepped to three chairs at the other end. Rose sat on the end, with a Doctor to either side. The sisters took up a position on either side of Meelark and just behind him.

As soon as they had a second, both Doctors ran their sonic screwdrivers over Rose.

"Venom," the part human confirmed, throwing a glare at the man on the other end of the table.

"The counter agent's working nicely though, especially with her own biology speeding it up," the Time Lord added, more jovially. "You'll be fine," he assured Rose as he put away his screwdriver.

The other Doctor kept his own sonic out, spinning it around in his fingers as he stared at the three Silurians on the other side of the table. "What needs discussed?" he asked.

"It is said that your coming will herald the return of the humans to this planet," Meelark told them.

"Humankind is due to return soon, yes," the brown suited Doctor replied.

Valana's sister went to say something, but Meelark held his hand up in a silencing gesture, and she closed her mouth again.

"We came up approximately 200 years after the humans left the planet," the Silurian man explained. "The solar flares had finally finished bombarding the planet, and there was much destruction. The surface was almost uninhabitable. We almost went back underground."

The time travelers listened to this tale with interest. That point in history was unknown.

"But where there is destruction, there is also new life. We saw plants growing. Seeds that survived the flares somehow. They were mutated, but those plants gave us the knowledge we needed." He sat forward, with his hands clasped together. "We took our seed stores, and through careful cultivation, we dotted the landscape with groups of every kind of plant. The same thing was done with the seed stores humans had put in place in the coldest parts of the planet. Less than half of the seeds sprouted, but eventually, we were able to allow them to grow unchecked. We were able to bring back some of the animals of our time, as well as some of the more modern animals back as well, through stores left by humans in case something like that had happened."

"Impressive," Rose told him, receiving a nod from the Silurian elder.

"Thank you. The balance is still incomplete, though" Meelark finished. "It is very delicate, and I know we're supposed to share the planet, but my people are afraid that if the humans come back, they'll destroy our work."

"Isn't the human race supposed to come back on an ark?" Rose asked the Doctors.

"Good point," the Doctor in blue said, pointing at her.

"There are only a few hundred humans coming back at first," the Doctor in brown told the Silurians. "The humans are coming with seeds of many kinds, as well as various animals in cryostasis and DNA samples to clone from. They're set up to do the same process you've been doing. I know, I've seen it."

"I'm sure that between what you have been doing, and what they can add, you'll have a properly diverse gene pool," the other Doctor added.

The discussion took nearly an hour, while the time travelers assured the Silurians that the humans and themselves could live and work together. Every time one of the Silurians would get close to making a mention of the last time they had been there, which hadn't happened for them yet, one of the others would stop them, something which Rose was grateful for. It was okay to know of a future trip, bad to know what happened on it. What they had gotten before the conversation began was too much, really.

When their business was concluded, the Doctors and Rose headed back to the TARDIS, both of the Doctors giving Rose a brief history of Silurians, a.k.a. Homo Reptilia, and their tribes. They stepped inside and moved to the console to dematerialize the timeship.

"Well, that was illuminating," the Doctor in brown said.

"Yep," the other Doctor replied.

"So, what now?" Rose asked. It had only been about 8 hours since Rose had woken up the first time, and she had taken a nap earlier.

"How do you feel?" the Time Lord asked.

"Good," rose responded.

"Well, lets take our new skills out for a test drive in a populated place," the part human said.

"No getting kidnapped this time," the Doctor in brown ordered, pointing his finger at her.

"But I was rubbish," Rose argued, skipping over the kidnapping. "Am I really ready for more distractions?"

"You did a bit better than we expected, actually," the Doctor in blue told her.

"When you weren't trying so hard, we both heard you just fine," the other Doctor informed her with a smile.

"It's the same skill set you learn when learning to talk outside your mind and inside at the same time, just expanded," the single hearted Doctor told her. "See? Didn't I tell you that was going to come in handy?" he bragged.

"Yes you did, oh wise one," Rose rolled her eyes while she gave a little mock bow.

The Time Lord chuckled as he set their next destination.


End file.
